"Slippery" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was but little frozen, and the snow made the roads more slippery than ever. But the rough-shod roan handled his feet dexterously and with a playful and somewhat self-righteous air, as though he said: "Didn't I do it handsomely that time?" Down slippery hills, through ...
— The Hoosier Schoolmaster - A Story of Backwoods Life in Indiana • Edward Eggleston
... it, as much as he ever showed anything. Excepting always the riverman, the driver of a team commands the highest wages among out-of-door workers. He has to be able to guide his horses by little steps over, through, and around slippery and bristling difficulties. He must acquire the knack of facing them square about in their tracks. He must hold them under a control that will throw into their collars, at command, from five pounds to their full power of pull, lasting from five seconds to five minutes. And above all, ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... shows the very slippery ground on which the assertion rests, that has lately astonished the weak minds of our Southern cattle-feeding brethren, from the mouth of one of their talented but hasty lecturers—that the potatoe contains two or three times the weight ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... transport them to the mountain tarns and interior lakes. There are fishes wherever there is a fluid medium, and even in clouds and in melted metals we detect their semblance. Think how in winter you can sink a line down straight in a pasture through snow and through ice, and pull up a bright, slippery, dumb, subterranean silver or golden fish! It is curious, also, to reflect how they make one family, from the largest to the smallest. The least minnow that lies on the ice as bait for pickerel, looks like a huge sea-fish cast up on the shore. In the waters ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... until the road was red with blood and clogged with corpses. Back and forth along the slippery highway the tide of battle surged, but never once was the gateway to ...
— Warlord of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... dreadful that comes from the marshes and is trying to surprise me from the rear! Suppose the slippery arms of a drowned man seize me, or the green eyes of a ghost look into my face; suppose a blue head on spider's legs comes out from behind the tree and begins ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... In emergencies like that men think quickly and to the point. The raft must be passed, or all was at an end. The logs had been long in the water, and doubtless were slippery with river slime. The launch might be run upon and over them. Once inside the raft, it could never return. No matter for that. He was there to sink the Albemarle. The smaller contingency of losing his own life was a matter to be ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... Greek [Greek: zytos], which signifies scraped; it was the place where the Wrestlers exercised; it was so called because they made their skins be scraped and rubbed smooth, to make the Sweat fall, and to make their Bodies more slippery, that their Adversaries might have the less hold of them ...
— An Abridgment of the Architecture of Vitruvius - Containing a System of the Whole Works of that Author • Vitruvius
... drizzly, disagreeable morning as I trundle out of the city gate over cobble-stones, made slippery by the rain. Walking before me is a slim young yameni-runner with a short bamboo-spear, and on his back a white bull's-eye eighteen inches in diameter; he is bare-footed and bare-headed and bare-legged. In the poverty of his apparel, ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... them and across the ice went Carmen, up the slippery hillside, and straight to the multi-mouthed machine gun, at the side of which stood Major Camp. She had been all night with these bewildered, maddened people. She had warmed shivering babes at her own breast. She had comforted widows ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... slate quarries that had long been disused, and were now half full of foul water. Around them the earth was heaped with loose fragments of rock which had evidently been detached from the principal mass and shivered to pieces in the fall. A few trees, among which were the black walnut, the slippery elm, and here and there an oak, grew among the rocks, and attested by their dwarfish stature the ungrateful soil in which they had taken root. It was not an exhilarating scene, but it was one that had a ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... first opening, it gives an ingenious account of the elements of speaking, and of the manner in which one may come to an understanding of ambiguous expressions, and of the principles of reasoning: then, after a few more things, it comes to the sorites, a very slippery and hazardous topic, and a class of argument which you yourself pronounced to be a ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... moment was Charley at a loss. His movements were precise, definite. He threaded his way amongst tree-trunks and a tangle of undergrowth with a certainty that never faltered. He surmounted jutting, slippery crags as though broad daylight marked out for him the better course. There were moments when he stood on the brink of a black abyss into which heavy waters fell to a depth of thirty or forty feet. But always he held the life-line so that the course lay clear ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... help it, David," said the little fellow so roughly spoken to by a sour-looking serving man; "the horse does jog so, and it's so slippery. If I didn't keep moving ...
— Young Robin Hood • G. Manville Fenn
... admittedly secondary hotel in the bye-street from the Rue de la Paix, in which her solicitude for his purse had placed him, which affected him somehow as all indoor chill, glass-roofed court and slippery staircase, and which, by the same token, expressed the presence of Waymarsh even at times when Waymarsh might have been certain to be round at the bank. It came to pass before he moved that Waymarsh, and Waymarsh alone, Waymarsh ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... any shot from Prussian guns entered their city. On the night of December 27 the bombardment began. It commenced by clearing what was called the Plateau d'Avron, to the east of Paris. The weather was intensely cold, the earth as hard as iron and as slippery as glass. The French do not rough their horses even in ordinary times, and slipperiness is a public calamity in a French city. The troops, stationed with little shelter on the Plateau d'Avron, had no notion that the Germans had been preparing masked batteries. The first shells that fell among them ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... of its predominance in early human history: the strongest killed out the weakest as they could. And I need not pause to prove that any form of polity is more efficient than none; that an aggregate of families owning even a slippery allegiance to a single head would be sure to have the better of a set of families acknowledging no obedience to any one, but scattering loose about the world and fighting where they stood. Homer's Cyclops ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... strong. They are without feathers nearly to the knees. The feet and toes are also very long, and the soles are covered with thick, hard scales, like the teeth of a rasp, which enable the bird to hold securely his slippery prey. The claws, too, are long, and curved into semicircles, with points upon them almost as ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... one daughter but she is an invalid. She was studying to be a dancer and one slippery day in winter she fell and broke her hip. And she has never ...
— The Merriweather Girls in Quest of Treasure • Lizette M. Edholm
... from Talang Puttei, this place being deserted by its inhabitants, several of whom the enemy had carried off with them as slaves. The country very hilly, and roads, in consequence of the heavy rains, bad and slippery. 16th. Marched in ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... for the reason that it increases the price, and that an increased price tends to make a temperate people; that if the tax is taken off, the price will fall and the whole country start on the downward road to destruction. Is it possible that human nature stands on such slippery ground? It is possible that our civilization to-day rests upon the price of alcohol, and that, should the price be reduced, we would all go down together? For one, I cannot entertain such a humiliating and disgraceful view of ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... long, silent, thoughtful look up stream, and another down stream, and instead of the gravel and bushes and grass, in one direction, and the rickety bridge and the slippery dam and the dingy old red mill, in the other direction, he seemed to see a vision of great buildings and streets and crowds of busy men, while the swishing ripple of the Cocahutchie changed into the rush and roar of the great city he was setting his heart upon. He gave it up for that ...
— Crowded Out o' Crofield - or, The Boy who made his Way • William O. Stoddard
... barrier of rocks opposite it. Between these precipitous crags dashed the river in a foaming cascade, nearly twelve feet in height, and the steep narrow causeway winding beside it, as above described, was rendered excessively slippery and dangerous from the constant cloud of spray arising ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... ye indeed? (Aside.) How smoothly to the air Slides that word father from his slippery tongue. Come hither, daughter, let me gaze on thee, For I have dreamed that thou wert beautiful, So beautiful our very duke did stop To smile upon thy brightness! What say'st thou, Bernardo, didst thou ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... check was dispatched, Millard's conscience, which had been aroused—irritated—by the standing rebuke of Phillida's superior disinterestedness, was in a measure appeased. After sitting an hour in slippery meditation he resolved to master his inclination toward Miss Callender's society, for fear of jeopardizing that bachelor ideal of life he had long cherished. Hilbrough's especial friendship, supported by Mrs. Hilbrough's gratitude, had of late put him in the way of making money ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... had landed was wet and covered with slippery seaweed. Experienced and cautious, he waited for a moment to make sure of his foothold, well knowing the dangers of slipping. Peril was nearer him than he knew. A roller came breaking in, sending a spurt of water right over the spot where he was standing. So precarious ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... from behind a buttress of projecting rock, there start across the path three dusky forms, flinging their hands wildly in the air. Then was heard that rare and awful sound, the shriek of a horse in the fear of a certain and coming death; when swerving one side, he lost his footing on the slippery shelf, and struggling madly, but unsuccessfully, to recover it, he fell over and over—down—down—a thousand feet down! From the sailor's lips there came ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... gaily, irrepressibly, light-heartedly, and skipped on to the first weed-covered rock that obstructed her path. It was an exceedingly slippery perch. She poised herself with arms outspread, with a butterfly grace as airy ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... He allus called in a doctor for 'em, and kept plenty of castor ile, turpentine, and de lak on hand to dose 'em wid. Miss Emily made teas out of a heap of sorts of leaves, barks, and roots, sich as butterfly root, pine tops, mullein, catnip and mint leaves, feverfew grass, red oak bark, slippery ellum bark, and black gum chips. Most evvybody had to wear little sacks of papaw seeds or of assyfizzy (asafetida) 'round deir necks to ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 3 • Works Projects Administration
... giant of Gath. You have to plunge waist deep, or deeper, into roaring torrents, and if the water be at all "drumly" you have not an idea where your next step may fall. It may be on a hidden rock, or on a round slippery boulder, or it may be into a deep "pot" or hole. The inexperienced angler staggers like a drunken man, is occasionally drowned, and more frequently is ducked. You have to cast painfully, with steep ...
— Angling Sketches • Andrew Lang
... it is, Inez," she said; "you're blessed with a real woman's brain: vague, slippery, inexact, interested only in the personal aspect of a thing. You can't concentrate your thoughts, and, worst of all, you've no curiosity—about anything that really matters. You take all the great facts of existence on trust—just as a hen does—and I've no doubt you'll go ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... talking of a poet hidden in the light. He has reason to believe that he understands the common word "hung"; and then William Shakespeare, Esquire, of Stratford-on-Avon, gravely assures him that the tops of the tall sea waves were hung with deafening clamours on the slippery clouds. That is why the common arithmetician prefers music to poetry. Words are his scientific instruments. It irritates him that they should be anyone else's musical instruments. He is willing to ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... of the wind and the roar of the breakers she could not be sure. Then she turned and glanced seaward. Again the foaming terror was rushing down upon them; again she flung herself upon the rock and grasping the slippery seaweed twined her left arm about the ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... swaying dizzily on the slippery footropes, shouting for hold and gasket, we fought the struggling wind-possessed monster, and again the leach was passed along the yard. A turn of the gasket would have held it, but even the leading hands ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
... a dissenting voice. A ditch in the mud, that was all, no matter how much farther we went. So we passed out of the trench into a soapy, slippery mud which had been ploughed ground in the autumn, now become lathery with the beat of men's steps. Our party became separated when some foundered and tried to hoist themselves with both boot-straps ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... she knew they were well up on the flanks of the run and nearing the peak. The stampede seemed slowing. A long, wavering flash revealed Harris a dozen jumps ahead. Papoose followed the paint-horse as Harris put Calico down the slippery sidehill and lifted him round the point of the herd. In the same flash Billie had seen two slickers out before the peaks of the run, flapping weirdly in the faces of the foremost cows. This accounted for the slowing-up she had sensed. Two of her ...
— The Settling of the Sage • Hal G. Evarts
... the rain pouring in torrents, the ground soaked, slippery, and caving, out into pitchy darkness, leaped three men and seven women from a puffing, unsteady train, no physician with them, and no instructions save the charge of their leader as the last leap was made, ...
— A Story of the Red Cross - Glimpses of Field Work • Clara Barton
... all he said, As standing in the river road, He looked back up the slippery slope (Two miles it was) to ...
— Mountain Interval • Robert Frost
... reached the edge of the cut. Here some plunged in, others were pushed in by the pressure from behind. Those who could swim were pulled down by their struggling comrades. Some got across and tried to climb the slippery side of the dike, but fell back and were seized by the Aztecs; whose canoes now dashed up, and added to the confusion by hurling a storm of missiles into ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty
... and serious-minded such as he; God forbid that I should say a sojer, or sailor, or commercial gent from the towns, or any of them that be slippery with poor women! I'd do no ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... but it was not suitable for war. The genius of the rebel leader did not desert him, and he was well able to look after himself. Round the fences he dug trenches, where he piled up the snow, on which he poured water. This, after being frozen, turned almost into stone, and was, at the same time, so slippery that no one could climb over it. Here he awaited Galiczin with a portion of his troops, while the remainder occupied Orenburg. The Russian general approached the hiding-place of the mock Czar cautiously. The thick ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Polish • Various
... is for stories demanding immediacy of print, and certain rules govern their handling that every correspondent should know. Suppose at six o'clock some afternoon an automobile owned and driven by Otto Thomson, receiving teller for the local Commercial Bank, skids over a slippery, tar-covered pavement into a telegraph pole on one of the main streets of the town, killing him and severely injuring two women in the car. What should the correspondent do in such a case? The accident ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... is an amusing mention of the skin of a huge bull elk, killed by the father, which the youngsters christened "old ellick"; they used to quarrel for the possession of it on cold nights, as it was very warm, though if the hairside was turned in it became slippery and apt to ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... the water, but he would never have fallen. He was too perfectly controlled; and, with all his apparent abstraction, no one was ever more alive to the detail of his surroundings. He and I have walked together perforce in many slippery places, but I have never known him to fall or even begin to lose his balance, whereas I have gone down ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... mountains are slippery and dangerous, leading across the ice-fields by cracks and chasms most fearful to see. The travellers dared not climb them without someone to show the way, and nobody in the village knew the way ...
— The Book of Stories for the Storyteller • Fanny E. Coe
... entertained him so well, that he did not think much more of his offended dignity.—When they set off on their journey again, the Baron and several of his followers came with them to show the only safe way across the morass, and a very slippery, treacherous, quaking road it was, where the horses' feet left pools of water wherever they trod. The King and the Baron rode together, and the other French Nobles closed round them; Richard was left quite in the background, and though the French men-at-arms took care not ...
— The Little Duke - Richard the Fearless • Charlotte M. Yonge
... sometimes, we could find nothing at a public table that we could eat. Then passing through a little settlement we could buy dried herring, crackers, gum arabic, and slippery elm; the latter, we were told, was very nutritious. We frequently sat down to a table with bacon floating in grease, coffee without milk, sweetened with sorghum, and bread or hot biscuit, green with soda, while vegetables and fruit were seldom seen. Our nights were ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... approvingly. The savant reposing in a palace-car, which is rushing through the midnight storm at a rate of fifty miles an hour, regards his situation with composure; but the unlettered engineer, whose eye is on the track,—who notes every slippery curve, swollen stream and overhanging bowlder,—who feels the motive power of that proud train swaying and plunging like a restless demon beneath his feet, is apt ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... few of the many arguments I usually employ to establish my point; but there is no pinning my friend down in an argument. He is such a slippery fellow that he wriggles off the pin and declares that these same orators, whose speeches I instance, spoke at less length than their published addresses seem to show. I hold the contrary to be the case, and there are many speeches of many ...
— The Letters of the Younger Pliny - Title: The Letters of Pliny the Younger - - Series 1, Volume 1 • Pliny the Younger
... his venomous eyes glittering, the head and the part of the body rising above the coils swaying gracefully back and forth. Yes, gracefully, for in spite of his hideous aspect, there was a certain horrible ease of movement about a rattler—a slippery, sinuous motion that partly revealed reserve strength, and hinted ...
— The Two-Gun Man • Charles Alden Seltzer
... octopus, did not propose to be cheated out of it. He was surprised that the cuttlefish could move so fast, and his repugnance gave way to excitement as he started running after the writhing eight-armed creature. He was just about to grab it when he tripped on a rock, covered with slippery seaweed, and fell headlong, the fall throwing him immediately upon the octopus. For a moment the boy was staggered, and he never knew whether he had grabbed the cephalopod or whether it had grasped him, all he knew was that he was lying on the ground with six of the eight arms ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... falls, the particles are loosely thrown together; but a warm sun or a little shower of rain melts them down a little, and then comes a night cold enough to freeze up your mouth, if you don't look out, and the surface of the snow becomes hard and slippery. Then such a time as the boys have sliding down hill—why, it is worth coming up as far north as New York, and running the risk of having your fingers frozen a little, to see them at it, and take a few ...
— Wreaths of Friendship - A Gift for the Young • T. S. Arthur and F. C. Woodworth
... reached the bigger boy's face and brought a veritable howl of rage from him. Like a windmill, thick arms swinging, he bored in to Penny. The latter retreated, guarding well, but Beaufort's blows were heavy ones, the ground was slippery with fallen leaves, and Penny, missing his footing, measured his length, his head narrowly escaping collision with a tree as he fell. With a grunt of triumph, Beaufort sprang toward him and aimed a blow. But Clint, ...
— Left Tackle Thayer • Ralph Henry Barbour
... try!" he muttered excitedly, and the next moment his lithe figure was running over the slippery ice bank to his airplane, out of ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... what might be in store at the will of their mutual enemy, and it came with appalling suddenness. Each small boy was lifted, bidden to shut his eyes and mouth, then plunged downward into a barrel of some cold slippery stuff. Here he was soused vigorously up and down, until every portion of his skin was smeared with the stick mess; after which he was placed on his feet and once ...
— Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond
... remained with us till the Pocahontas returned North, ten months later. He was an officer of varied service, and like all such, some more, some less, abounded in anecdote of his own experiences. A great deal that might be instructive, and more still that is entertaining, is lost by our slippery memories and the rarity of the journal-keeping habit. I remember distinctly only two of his stories. One related to a matter which now belongs to naval archaeology,—"backing and filling in a tideway," by a ship under sail. In this, in a winding channel, the ship sets towards her destination ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... afternoon—wet, and windy, and wild. The New York streets were at their worst—sloppy, slippery, and sodden; the sky lowering over those murky streets one uniform pall of inky gloom. A bad, desolate, ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... only six cans of peaches that were worth the powder to blast them open. A man that will invent a can opener that will split open one of these pale, sickly, hard hearted canned peaches, that swim around in a pint of slippery elm juice in a tin can, has got a fortune. And they have got to canning pumpkin, ...
— Peck's Sunshine - Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun, - Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882 • George W. Peck
... could be more unpromising than that which slowly greeted him, as the night withdrew her veil and the stealthy steps of the dawn said that no bright day was chasing her forward. Fast enough it lighted up the slippery way, the glistening fences, the falling sleet which sheathed fields and houses with glare ice. And the city, when they came to it, was no better. It was worse; for the dolefulness was positive here, which before in the broad open country was only negative. The icy sheath was now ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... than he would a beaten path. He threw off his cloak, folded it in the smallest possible compass, and secured it like a knapsack to his shoulders, slung his sword over his neck, and, with a vigorous spring, which conquered several paces of slippery rock at once, commenced the ascent. Some brushwood, and one or two stunted trees, gave him now and then a hold for his hands; and occasional ledges in the rock, a resting for his foot; but still one false step, one failing nerve, and he must have fallen ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... an arm to catch it. For the way now lay where path was none, and none might go but by himself, and only go by daring. Through blackberry brakes that tried to pluck me back, though I but strained towards fruitless growths of mountain-laurel; up slippery steeps to barren heights, where stood none to welcome. Fairy land not yet, thought I, though the ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... smartly uniformed staff came clattering up the slippery street and halted to watch the prisoners defile. And, as the first of the captive cuirassiers came abreast of the staff, the general stiffened in his saddle and raised his hand to his helmet, saying to his officers, loud enough for me ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... of his periodical visits to the hollow-tree. It was close on nine o'clock when he passed stealthily down the lane, keeping close to the park wall. A soft rain was falling, the first since the prolonged drought, and though it made the road heavy and slippery in places, it helped to deaden the sound of the young man's furtive footsteps. The air, except for the patter of the rain, was absolutely still. Henri de Montorgueil paused from time to time, with neck craned forward, every sense on the alert, listening, like any poor, hunted beast, for ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... ridiculous nonsense, for having paddled to her, I was thrown into paroxysms of rage by repeated failures to scale her bulwarks, low as they were; my hands, indeed, could reach, but I found no hold upon the slimy mass, and three rope-ends which I caught were also untenably slippery: so that I jerked always back into the boat, my clothes a mass of filth, and the only thought in my blazing brain a twenty-pound charge of guncotton, of which I had plenty, to blow her to uttermost Hell. I had to return to the Speranza, get a half-inch rope, then back to the other, for ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... thrown open towards the sun to admit a bountiful light to the immediate spot of the shearers' operations, which was the wood threshing-floor in the centre, formed of thick oak, black with age and polished by the beating of flails for many generations, till it had grown as slippery and as rich in hue as the state-room floors of an Elizabethan mansion. Here the shearers knelt, the sun slanting in upon their bleached shirts, tanned arms, and the polished shears they flourished, causing these to bristle with a thousand rays strong enough ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... connected with the interior by breakneck paths and by rude steps, slippery with green moss. The people seem to delight in standing, like wild goats, upon the dizziest of 'jumpy' peaks; we see boys perched like birds upon impossible places, and men walking along precipice-faces apparently pathless. The villages are joined ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... Marechal, continuing to eat with an excellent appetite, "you are about to depart, my son; you are going to the court—a slippery place nowadays. I am sorry for your sake that it is not now what it used to be. In former times, the court was simply the drawing-room of the King, in which he received his natural friends: nobles of great family, his peers, who visited him to show their devotion and their friendship, lost their ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... is to climb a mountain. You don't get up so quick, but you don't come down so sudden. Even then, there's a chance that a fellow may slip and fall over a precipice, but not unless he's foolish enough to try short-cuts over slippery places; though some men can manage to fall down the hall stairs and break their necks. The path isn't the shortest way to the top, but it's ...
— Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... whack it quickly enough. I'm going to try again." She felt into the bran for another egg. This time she struck the shell so hard that its contents splashed out sideways with an unexpected squirt and slid to the floor. She was ready to cry as she wiped up the slippery stuff, but there came to her mind some verses which Tippy had taught her long ago. And so determined had Tippy been for her to learn them, that she offered the inducement of a string of blue beads. The name of the poem ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... they appear more than usually hideous when built amid a fair green country, where for miles and miles one sees nothing but flowering hedgerows and soft pastures shaded by the graceful foliage of sheltering trees. Then the shining, slippery iron of the railway running like a knife through the verdant bosom of the land almost hurts the eyes, and the accessories of station-sheds, coal-trucks, and the like, affront the taste like an ill-done foreground ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... of his image in very complimentary terms, and Lewisham could not avoid a glance across the table at Ethel. He remembered that Chaffery was a slippery scoundrel whose blame was better than his ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... doubted the goodness and splendour of the man's character. Men might call his body old and feeble and past the work that it was still called upon to perform. They might speak of him as guileless, as too innocent of this world's slippery ways, as trusting where no child of six years of age would have trusted; these things might have been, and were, said, but no man, woman, nor child, looking upon him, hesitated to realise that here was some one who had walked and talked with God and in whom there was no shadow of deceit nor ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... are wet and slippery with brine and with the blood of herrings dripping down from one floor to another. Fish scales cover the walls, and everywhere there is a smell as if one were in the belly ...
— Skipper Worse • Alexander Lange Kielland
... merely age dealing with the slippery stones of the brook;" said the latter, as he recovered his footing. "That had well-nigh been a fatal discharge! but God, for his own purpose, ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... terrible though it may be. Anything may be expected of Lucien, anything good or evil. That is our opinion, and this letter is summed up in that sentence. If the vicissitudes of his present way of life (a very wretched and slippery one) should bring the poet back to you, use all your influence to keep him among you; for until his character has acquired stability, Paris will not be safe for him. He used to speak of you, you and your husband, as his guardian angels; he has ...
— Eve and David • Honore de Balzac
... death so barbarous! Those that are proud of fickle empery And place their chiefest good in earthly pomp, Behold the Turk and his great emperess! Ah, Tamburlaine my love, sweet Tamburlaine, That fight'st for sceptres and for slippery crowns, Behold the Turk and his great emperess! Thou that, in conduct of thy happy stars, Sleep'st every night with conquest on thy brows, And yet wouldst shun the wavering turns of war, [295] In fear and feeling of the like distress ...
— Tamburlaine the Great, Part I. • Christopher Marlowe
... the margin of the channel; we therefore soon reached it, despite the difficulty of the going, the surface of the reef proving to be exceedingly rough, and covered for the most part with weed so terribly slippery that it was positively dangerous to attempt to walk upon it. When at length we reached the summit of the rock we were not much better off; for although we could see from thence a great deal more of the reef than was to be observed ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood
... wrenched the dripping blade from Gale's hand; it no longer gleamed, but was warm and slippery in his fingers. Poleon held Stark's gun, which ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... "slippery and prone to." For the metaphor of "slippery" compare Horace, "Odes," i. 19-8, "Et vultus nimium ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... the debate must open more or less lamely, for it is hard to attack or oppose something which is going to be set forth after you have finished talking. Here, however, as in the case of written arguments, it must be remembered that burden of proof is a vague and slippery term; "he who asserts must prove" is a maxim that in debate applies to the larger issues only, and the average audience will give themselves little trouble about the finer applications of it. If you are proposing a change in present conditions, and the present conditions ...
— The Making of Arguments • J. H. Gardiner
... street, and were driven roughly by other German soldiers toward the open space of Madison Square. We fled over red and slippery pavements, strewn with the bodies of dead and wounded policemen and civilians—the hideous harvest of the machine-guns. At the corner of Madison Avenue and Twenty-fifth Street I saw an immense coal-carrying ...
— The Conquest of America - A Romance of Disaster and Victory • Cleveland Moffett
... quietly pacing up and down the orange alley in the New World, between the crimson snow and the blazing west; or treading lightly across the wet ground at black midnight, when the cattle are restless, or the blacks are abroad; or even, I should think, staggering on the slippery deck, when the big grey seas are booming past, and the good ship seems plunging ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... Precious distinctly. Miss Theodosia caught him to her, slippery and sweet, with a cry ...
— Miss Theodosia's Heartstrings • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... over his head, he drove his left to the other's jaw. The big Irishman toppled over sidewise and sprawled on the edge of the slope. Half-scrambled back to his feet and out of balance, he was caught by Bert's fist, and this time went clawing down the slope that was slippery with short, dry grass. Bert was redoubtable. "That for you, old girl—my compliments," was his cry, as he shoved the woman over the edge on to the treacherous slope. Three more men ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... opposite sleeve, awaited Windham just outside the door. He set out immediately in an easterly direction, glancing over his shoulder now and again to make certain that Benito followed. Down the steep slope of Washington street he went past moss-grown retaining walls; over slippery brick pavements, through which the grass-blades sprouted, to plunge at length into the eddying alien mass of Chinatown's main artery, Dupont street. Here rushing human counter-currents ebbed and flowed ceaslessly. Burdens of all sizes and of infinite ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... superstructure. It seemed a long journey from one end to the other. Above, the scurrying clouds, below, the angry river, all around, the drizzling storm, it was a sorry scene; and a sullen welcome to the soil of Virginia, that was then as often before and afterwards, a slippery, ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... reach up on his hind legs and gnaw the standing plant. The management of a dry and slippery corn-ear at first presented some difficulty, but, as his muscles strengthened, he found himself able to sit up on his haunches and hold it squirrel-fashion in his fore-paws, nibbling, to begin with, at the pointed end, which is the best way into most ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... From the dark slippery street shrill familiar sounds rose to her ear and drew her attention downward and she smiled. He was down there at play with friends whose parents lived in the houses of the row. She laughed as those victorious cries reached the upper air. Leaning forward, ...
— A Cathedral Singer • James Lane Allen
... you like," retorted Mr. Clare. "Sneak or Sweetheart —he's too slippery, in either capacity, for my fingers to hold him. My shutting the door won't keep him from coming back. Your shutting the door will. Have you the courage to shut it? Are you fond enough of him not to stand ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... caught his foot on some slippery weed as he advanced, and the chance stumble saved his life. For otherwise Hatteraick's second bullet, aimed coolly and steadily, would certainly have crashed through his skull. Before he could draw a third, Dandie Dinmont was upon him. Yet such ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... thus able to cross during the night from one side of the sea to the other. As morning dawned, Menephthah, once more carefully guarding his own person, sent his chariots in pursuit. The force entered on the slippery and dangerous ground, and advanced half-way; but its progress was slow; the chariot-wheels sank into the soft ooze, the horses slipped and floundered; all was disorder and confusion. Before the troops could extricate themselves, the waters returned on either hand; a high flow of ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... grew masses of vari-colored seaweed, brown, yellow, blue-green, even pink. Footing proved both slippery and treacherous, but offered the fascination of exploring an unknown region. As they walked farther out, curious shell-fish were ...
— The Spanish Chest • Edna A. Brown
... boy coming down the steps, calling me as he came. I shouted to him to stop, but he went on, laughing and calling. My feet and hands became cramped with fear. I shut my eyes, afraid to see. When I opened them, there, at the slippery stairs, my boy's ripple of laughter had ...
— The Hungry Stones And Other Stories • Rabindranath Tagore
... red-headed boy in a dirty uniform and told him to take the American to vingt-quatre. The boy also spoke English. "Plenty money in New York, I guess! In France, no money." He made their way, through musty corridors and up slippery staircases, as long as possible, shrewdly eyeing the visitor and rubbing his thumb nervously against ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... tortuous road, paved with pebbles. Goody Liu left dowager lady Chia and the party walk on the raised road, while she herself stepped on the earth. But Hu Po tugged at her. "Come up, old dame, and walk here!" she exclaimed. "Mind the fresh moss is slippery and you might fall." ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... the bark are characteristics worthy of notice: the strong, fragrant odor of the Spice-bush; the fetid odor of the Papaw; the aromatic taste of the Sweet Birch; the bitter taste of the Peach; the mucilaginous Slippery Elm; the strong-scented, resinous, aromatic ...
— Trees of the Northern United States - Their Study, Description and Determination • Austin C. Apgar
... hopeless and appalling. Every movement of her was ominous of the end of her agony and of the beginning of ours. We staggered away from the door, and, alarmed by a sudden roll, fell down in a bunch. It appeared to us that the side of the house was more smooth than glass and more slippery than ice. There was nothing to hang on to but a long brass hook used sometimes to keep back an open door. Wamibo held on to it and we held on to Wamibo, clutching our Jimmy. He had completely collapsed now. He did not seem to have the strength to close his hand. We stuck ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... world is not easy to live in. It is rough; it is slippery. Without the most clear-eyed adjustments we fall and get crushed. A man must stay sober: not always, but most of the time. Those of us who drink from the flasks of the sages of dreamland become so intoxicated with guff we are a peril ...
— The Crow's Nest • Clarence Day, Jr.
... man) but for cruel accidents which have almost taken the heart out of them. He is a beef-boner, and that is a dangerous trade, especially when you are on piecework and trying to earn a bride. Your hands are slippery, and your knife is slippery, and you are toiling like mad, when somebody happens to speak to you, or you strike a bone. Then your hand slips up on the blade, and there is a fearful gash. And that would not be so bad, only for the deadly contagion. The cut may heal, but you never can tell. Twice ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... "Lucky Isle" was largely clay, moist and slippery, and as the eager young viking climbed the bank his right foot slipped, and he would have fallen had not he struck his left foot firmly in the clay and thus saved himself. But to slip at all was a bad sign in those old, half-pagan, ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... themselves in her way, and the one on whom her limp grasp fell ignored the fact that Elizabeth could not name her, and gaily held up the handkerchief to be tied over her own eyes in turn. Nobody caught Olga again. She was as quick as a flash and as slippery as an eel. Elizabeth's eyes followed her constantly, and a little glimmer of a smile touched her lips as Olga slipped safely out of reach of one catcher ...
— The Torch Bearer - A Camp Fire Girls' Story • I. T. Thurston
... the spring of the chamois she burst away, and bounding from the world, saved herself in Ether, where she remains to this day. Her dress was, however, left behind, and was carried home in triumph. It is, however, composed of such slippery materials as its former owner, and it escapes as it pleases from one party to another. It is this dress of Liberty which we now reverence as the goddess herself, and whatever is clothed with it for the time receives the same adoration as would have been offered up to the true shrine. Even ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... law of God. It was witnessed by the Savior "in its worst form,"[A] without extorting from his lips a syllable of rebuke. "The sacred writers did not condemn it."[B] And why should they? By a definition[C] sufficiently ambiguous and slippery, he undertakes to set forth a form of slavery which he looks upon as consistent with the law of Righteousness. From this definition he infers that the abolitionists are greatly to blame for maintaining ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... even, it is a great advantage, as he would whip nimbly round, and threaten to break the impounded finger; this would be considered quite fair. One will often suddenly drop on his knees and try to reach the ankles of his adversary. I have seen a slippery customer, stoop suddenly down, grasp up a handful of dust, and throw it into the eyes of his opponent. It was done with the quickness of thought, but it was detected, and on an appeal by the sufferer, the knave was well thrashed by ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... to have been in thrall to six haircloth chairs, a slippery sofa to match, and a very cold, marble-top center table, from the beginning of this century down to comparatively recent times. In all the best homes there was also a marble mantel to match the center table; ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... to be paid to Somers—for the rebels evidently did not regard him as either a slippery or a dangerous person—he was permitted to bring up the rear. Now, it is always mortifying to be held in slight esteem, especially to a sensitive mind like that of our hero; and he resented the slight by declining to follow the party. Near the ...
— The Young Lieutenant - or, The Adventures of an Army Officer • Oliver Optic
... drawn in terms far too lax. It might exclude from public employment a few honest Jacobites who were generally too dull to be mischievous; but it was altogether inefficient as a means of binding the supple and slippery consciences of cunning priests, who, while affecting to hold the Jesuits in abhorrence, were proficients in that immoral casuistry which was the worst part of Jesuitism. Some grave divines had openly said, others had ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... no attention. Out on the slippery ice he ran, and then he turned around and, looking at Daddy Blake and the two children, he barked ...
— Daddy Takes Us Skating • Howard R. Garis
... her ladyship, pushing him towards the door—"Do go about your business, for I haven't common patience with you: on my conscience I believe the man's in love—and not with me! That's sal-volatile for you, child, I perceive," continued she to Belinda. "O, you can walk now—but remember you are on slippery ground: remember Clarence Hervey is not a marrying man, and you ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... the preparations that Jem Deady and his followers made on this occasion. Two stout fishermen, carrying a strong cable, clambered down the cliff, and crossed the narrow ledge of rock, now wet with seaweed and slippery. They might have gone down, with perfect ease, the goat-path, sanded and gravelled, by which the bailiffs were carried the night before; but this would not be value for a pound and the copious libations that were to follow. They then tied the cable around the bailiffs ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... had defied, That wrought out from fortune what favor denied, Standing aloof from the world in his pride; The niche he has carved on fame's slippery wall Friends are proclaiming with heraldry-call. His Croesus-bright scepter has magical sway, Yester's indifference solicits to-day. His daring his triumph, how daily he fares, Every one knows, ...
— Debris - Selections from Poems • Madge Morris
... called 'skids,' which are always well greased, are laid down in front of her stem, her crew climb on board, the mizzen is set, and the trigger is let go. By her own impetus the lugger rushes down the steep slope on the slippery skids into the sea. Even when a heavy sea is beating right on shore, the force acquired by the rush is sufficient to drive her safely into deep water. Lest too heavy a surf or any unforeseen accident should prevent this, a cable called a 'haul-off ...
— Heroes of the Goodwin Sands • Thomas Stanley Treanor
... the afternoon they were busy with rehearsals: the mental tabulating of new stage business, the adapting of strange stage property, the accustoming of one's feet to tread gracefully over roots and tangling vines and slippery patches of pine needles instead of a good stage flooring. And through all this maze Patsy's mind played truant. A score of times it raced off back to the road again, to wait between a stretch of woodland and a grove of giant pines ...
— Seven Miles to Arden • Ruth Sawyer
... I would go up the side of my own particular corpse, and would feel her as cold as ice itself and as slippery under my feet. My cold berth would swallow up like a chilly burial niche my bodily shivers and my mental excitement. It was a cruel winter. The very air seemed as hard and trenchant as steel; but it would have taken much more than ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... of thine excellence; Rive the dense gloom with wedges of clear light; And let the shimmer of thy chariot wheels Burn through the cracks of night.—So slowly, Lord, To lift myself to thee with hands of toil, Climbing the slippery cliff of unheard prayer! Lift up a hand among my idle days— One beckoning finger. I will cast aside The clogs of earthly circumstance, and run Up the broad highways where the countless worlds Sit ripening in ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... disappeared at times on the barren rock, or under some recent land-slide. They had much trouble finding the broken thread again. Their feet hesitated upon the polished surface of the stone, or the short and slippery grass. There were moments when they felt as if they stood upon an almost vertical slope, and if they attempted to stop and take breath, the vast spaces stretching before them, the boundless extent, the dazzling ...
— Led Astray and The Sphinx - Two Novellas In One Volume • Octave Feuillet
... by the moonlight,—its great rocks, slippery with sea-weed, glittered with a wet sheen. The Sound wore its diamonds royally, and each tiny wave broke in a jewelled light upon the sand. Far in the distance the dim shore of Long Island lay like a black line upon the water; and sloops and schooners sailed softly on their course, ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... fright turned and trampled down the men behind. Rapidly the panic increased as the showers of missiles came tearing down, and soon the whole army was in a state of wild terror and confusion—a condition greatly assisted by the slippery nature of the ground. Then, with wild shouts, and brandishing their iron-studded clubs and their formidable halberts and scythes, down the mountain-side rushed, with the fury of their native avalanche, the heroic Confederates; ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... wader, an avoset, appears as if standing on stilts, its legs are so long; and its bill seems bent the wrong way, or upward. It is constantly seen wading in the shallows, digging up little slippery insects, the peculiar form of the bill enabling it to work them easily out of the sand. When feeding, it puts its head under the water to seize the insect at the bottom, then lifts it up quickly, making a rapid gobbling, as if swallowing ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... in fact crossed every moment by marshy hollows. A slope, slippery as glass with the frost, hurried the carriages into them and there they stuck; to draw them out it was necessary to climb the opposite ascent by an icy road, where the horses, whose shoes were worn quite smooth, could ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... picture gallery absorbed the whole of her essentially practical and active mind. Deciding on the left-hand flight of stairs, she entered that immensely long, narrow, and—with blinds drawn—rather dark saloon. She walked carefully, because the floor was very slippery here, and with a kind of seriousness due partly to the darkness and partly to the pictures. They were indeed, in this light, rather formidable, those old Caradocs black, armoured creatures, some of them, who seemed to eye with a sort of burning, grim, defensive greed the ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... child—I'll meet you all the way round—I swear to—you shan't forget it! Only you must ride straight. If you play me any monkey tricks over it—you'll never set eyes on me again; and I'm afraid you'll have to have Travers, because I trust him, not some slippery old woman who'd let you play him like a fish! ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome
... Humphrey, who nodded, and the men took to their oars, while Lynton steered the heavy boat right up to the remains of a stone-encumbered wharf or pier that had been laboriously cut out of the solid rock. Here the boats were held, and, well armed, half their occupants sprang out to climb over the slippery stones, which had evidently only lately bean covered by the flood-water, whose mark could be plainly seen, reaching up some ten feet, or half-way to where there ran for hundreds of yards a more or less regular broad terrace cut down out of the rock, and from which the ...
— Old Gold - The Cruise of the "Jason" Brig • George Manville Fenn
... passage, dark, wet, and slippery. In the left-hand wall of this passage was a door, studded with iron nails thickly covered with rust. The key was in this door. During the instant required for throwing it wide, a large flake of ice fell from the ceiling of the passage upon ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... dared only follow. The footing was uncertain, with deep water on one side up to a level with the stones, and a steep descent to more deep water on the other. In one or two spots the water ran over, and those spots were slippery. But, rendered absolutely fearless by her terrible fear, Hester flew across without a slip, leaving Vavasor some little way behind, for he was neither very sure-footed ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... to make his way across the slippery mosaic of the floor; but she had comprehended that savage and cruel grief; she felt that in the flight of Raoul there was an accusation, or at least a suspicion against herself. A woman, ever vigilant, she did not think she ought to let the opportunity slip of making ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... round to talk, to hear, and especially to drink. The power of the man in this last matter is wonderful, and the puzzle is, that his standing (and perpendicularity) is not perceptibly affected. Of course there are times when BOOTSBY'S standing is not so good. In so slippery a place as Wall Street, it is found to be less certain; while in a crowd on Broadway, waiting for a bus, it cannot be said to maintain a very remarkable firmness. But as a whole, and as the world goes, BOOTSBY is a man of standing. ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 5, April 30, 1870 • Various
... that night, and somehow my skates were very troublesome. Mr. Summers bent down to arrange them, and I declined making use of his shoulder as a support. I never knew how I did it, but ice is slippery; I performed an extraordinary slide—kicked Mr. Summers directly in the mouth, thereby knocking out one of his front teeth, as though I had been a vicious horse—and went backward into the arms of the oldest male pupil of the Peppersville Academy, while my unfortunate ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... and gayety of style might be envied by any professional Author. He amuses me, but he rouses my suspicion at the same time. This slippery lover of mine tells me to defer writing to his father, and gives no reason for offering that strange advice to the young lady who is soon to be a member of the family. Is this merely one more instance of the weakness of his character? ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... summit was not good, but that down the other side was bad. The irregular, great blocks of limestone, covered with the smooth, dry, slippery coating, caused constant stumbling to our poor animals. From this valley we rose onto a yet grander range. Here we had our first Mixe experience. At the very summit, where the road became for a little time level, before plunging down into the profound valley ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr
... and a tremendous splashing, and Dick Winthorpe struggled to his feet, wiping the black fluid bog from his eyes, to see Solomon hauled right out, slowly at first, then faster and faster, till he was literally run over the slippery surface to where there ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... twinkling of an eye, not in at the mouth of the earth and through the steep cavern down which Odin went to the dead Vala's grave; he chose another way, though not a better one; for, go to Helheim how you will, the best is but a downward road, and so Hermod found it—downward, slanting, slippery, dark, and very cold. At last he came to the Giallar Bru—that sounding river which flows between the living and the dead, and the bridge over which is paved with stones of glittering gold. Hermod was surprised to see gold in such a place; but as he rode over the bridge, and looked down carefully ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... announced, making a final effort to deter his master from the expedition. But opening his umbrella the latter went without a word into the damp and sodden garden, which was dark as a cellar. The wind was roaring and tossing the bare tree-tops. The little sandy paths were wet and slippery. Alexey Yegoryvitch walked along as he was, bareheaded, in his swallow-tail coat, lighting up the path for about three steps before ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... Brutus, yours; now yours, Metellus; Yours, Cinna; and, my valiant Casca, yours; Though last, not least in love, yours, good Trebonius. 190 Gentlemen all,—alas, what shall I say? My credit now stands on such slippery ground, That one of two bad ways you must conceit me, Either a coward or a flatterer. That I did love thee, Caesar, O, 'tis true: 195 If, then, thy spirit look upon us now, Shall it not grieve thee dearer than thy death, To see thy Antony making his peace, Shaking the ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare
... the portion assigned to the combatants, and derived its name from the sand with which it was strewn, to absorb the blood and prevent it from becoming slippery. Some of the emperors showed their prodigality by substituting precious powders, and even gold dust, for sand. The arena was generally of the same shape as the amphitheatre itself, and was separated from the spectators by a ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... figure of the French boy slim, and lithe as a willow, with muscles tense as ironwood, and step silent as the mountain-cat. All that night he ran without a single stop. Chill daybreak found him still staggering on, over rocks slippery with the night frost, over windfall tree on tree in a barricade, through brawling mountain brooks where his moccasins broke the skim of ice at the edge, past rivers where he half waded, half swam. He was now faint from want of food; but fear spurred him on. ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... hasten, but the pavement was all slushy and slippery, and his boots felt heavier and heavier, and, to add to his misery, the pursuers had found out their mistake. As he looked back, he could see the clown galloping round the corner and hear his yell ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... rain beat against my chamber window, and in the morning the lower slopes of the mountains were gray with new snow, which no thunder had packed. Indigo-colored clouds lay heavily on all the Alpine peaks; the air was raw and chilly, and the roads slippery. In such weather the scenery is not only shrouded, but the people are shut up in their homes,—wherefore further travel would not have been repaid. I had already seen the greater part of the little land, and so gave up my thwarted plans the more cheerfully. When the post-omnibus for Herisau ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... the rough, steep, paved alleys, slippery with frost, and with their vista of snow mountains against the sky, and passed by the church steps strewn with box and laurel, with the faint smell of incense coming out, there returned to me—I know ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... be?' I thought, and went towards the sound by a slippery path through the centre of the field. Walking about a hundred paces, I began to distinguish many black objects through the mist. They were evidently soldiers. 'It is probably a drill,' ...
— The Forged Coupon and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... small, which were used in former times by the Indians. We had fully intended to climb the face of this almost perpendicular cliff, to explore the caves, and photograph the interiors with the aid of flashlights, but decided that the climb was too hard, and the ground too wet and slippery for safety. As a false step or an insecure foothold would send us to the bottom with broken bones, if not broken necks, we contented ourselves with photographing the face of the cliff from a ...
— Byways Around San Francisco Bay • William E. Hutchinson
... deck, and easily enough, the deck being slippery, got my first man to where the huge fellow was that had sentinelled the vessel when I first looked down upon her; but when I viewed the slopes, broken into rocks, which I, though unburdened, had found hard enough to ascend, I was perfectly ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... has a curious, penetrating power and carries a great distance. Not only does this sentinel give warning of danger, but he indicates from which direction it is coming.—Author.] In an instant Chaffer was off, leaping over wide chasms, climbing over crags and dizzy heights, sliding down dangerous, slippery places, but always going in the opposite direction to the ...
— Rataplan • Ellen Velvin
... that was a physical impossibility. Besides, I was determined that the windows also should he found bolted. The solution was simple enough. I descended softly to my own room for a peculiar instrument which I had used for holding small slippery substances, such as minute spheres of glass, etc. This instrument was nothing more than a long slender hand-vice, with a very powerful grip, and a considerable leverage, which last was accidentally owing to the shape of the handle. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... had been compelled to slacken somewhat in his clumsy bovine rush, and Tom observed with satisfaction, as the minutes went on, and they must have been—pursuer and pursued—toiling over the slippery fir-needles for quite a quarter of an hour, that Pete glanced over his shoulder more often ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... only fit to be inhabited by a Cyclops. So in the country of the Laestrygons, Homer, preparing his reader gradually for something very disagreeable, represents the rocks as bare and "exposed to the sun";[107] only with some smooth and slippery roads over them, by which the trucks bring down wood from the higher hills. Any one familiar with Swiss slopes of hills must remember how often he has descended, sometimes faster than was altogether intentional, by these ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... planking of any kind, and all freight and baggage is landed on (or into) the muddy bank. Barrels rolled through it became unrecognizable, and were doubled in weight before they reached their warehouse. Men worked on bare feet, with trousers rolled to their knees, and the slippery, swashy look of everything was horrible. An Indian (not of the Fenimore Cooper type) leant against an old cooking-stove stranded on the bank, and an old squaw squatted on a heap of dirty straw, watching with lack-lustre eyes the disembarkation. A mile or two ...
— A Trip to Manitoba • Mary FitzGibbon
... attendance; a strange hush and stillness seemed to pervade the place. Bessie almost felt oppressed by it. The hall was large and dark, with a smooth, slippery floor, and was panelled in dark oak; oak settles and large carved antique cabinets were ranged round the walls. The great fireplace was filled with green boughs, and a tiger skin, with a huge grinning head and eyes, lay before it. The quiet little country girl had never seen such ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... which is kindled a few moments before bed-time in an atmosphere where you can see your breath? Do you remember the process of getting warm in a bed of most faultless material, with linen sheets and pillow-cases, slippery and cold as ice? You did get warm at last, but you warmed your bed by giving out all the heat of your ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... other could have such bright brown eyes beneath heavy sandy brows, such red, red cheeks, and so long and silver-white a beard which the sun could still betray into confession of its youthful ruddiness. What if he did have, too, a brogue so soft, so wheedling that men had long called him Slippery Uncle Sammy? ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... took but little heed of time, and had but little understanding of its flight. But there were days and nights in it; and when the sun was high, and when the rays of lamps were crooked in the running water, I was still afloat, I thought: plashing the slippery walls and houses with the cleavings of the tide, as my black boat, borne upon it, skimmed along ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... foot or eighteen inches higher in its rise, the water access to the doors of the palaces would have been impossible; even as it is, there is sometimes a little difficulty, at the ebb, in landing without setting foot upon the lower and slippery steps: and the highest tides sometimes enter the court-yards, and overflow the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... comfort in the prospect when, weary and cold, they finally drew their canoes ashore for the evening's camp. The forest was dripping, the ground soggy, each separate twig and branch cold and slippery to the hand. The accumulated water of a day showered down at the slightest movement. A damp wind seemed to rise from ...
— The Silent Places • Stewart Edward White
... chilling wind; a mean, peevish rain washed its sides, and they were so steep that if we sat upon them we tobogganed slowly downward, ploughing up the mud with our boot heels. Hungry, sleepy, in utter darkness, we clung to this slippery mound in its ocean of whispering millet like sailors wrecked in mid-sea upon a rock, and waited for the day. After two hours a gray mist came grudgingly, trees and rocks grew out of it, trenches appeared ...
— Notes of a War Correspondent • Richard Harding Davis |
