"Snag" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Alf, when this here Kaiser comes up ag'inst me he strikes a snag. He couldn't 'a' started his plot in a worse place than here in Tinkletown. Gosh, with all you hear about German efficiency, you'd 'a' thought he'd 'a' ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... smiled reassuringly across at her. "All right, old thing. Two heads are generally better than one if you're up against a snag." ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... the world has, to let you trip once, and then run on smooth ground some time, before it puts another snag in your way; and it made no exception in Que's favor. His drab clothes kept clean a long time, in spite of the leather bag, and washed well when they were not clean. The Gingoo postmaster took a fancy to him, and the Point post master refrained ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... the Mississippi and its tributaries, the pilot is the man of greatest importance. He is supposed to be thoroughly familiar with the channel of the river in all its windings, and to know the exact location of every snag or other obstruction. He can generally judge of the depth of water by the appearance of the surface, and he is acquainted with every headland, forest, house, or tree-top, that marks the horizon and tells him how to keep his course at night. ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox
... approach in world interest the story of the achievements of the New England mariners on all the oceans of the globe. Little danger from tempest was encountered here. The natural perils to navigation were but an ignoble and unromantic kind—the shifting sand-bar and the treacherous snag. Yet, in the early days, when the flatboats were built at Cincinnati or Pittsburg, with high parapets of logs or heavy timber about their sides, and manned not only with men to work the sweeps and hold the steering oar, but with riflemen, ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... failed to reach it. The whispering rushes and feathery palms at the water's edge hid evil-smelling mud, festering with fever, the home of reptiles and crocodiles. Desperately the boy strove to overtake the boat, and just as he was giving up hope, a friendly snag tempted the runaway to pause, and Piang's strong, young hand closed over the outrigger. Then began the task of climbing back. A sudden movement might release the banco, and it would continue its mad flight, which ...
— The Adventures of Piang the Moro Jungle Boy - A Book for Young and Old • Florence Partello Stuart
... make a stagger at it in my dreams, and get up with the lockjaw in the morning. I am fading. I do not take my meals now, with any sort of regularity. Her dear name haunts me still in my dreams. It is awful on teeth. It never comes out of my mouth but it fetches an old snag along with it. And then the lockjaw closes down and nips off a couple of the last syllables—but ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... through the wood Where the old gray snag of the poplar stood, Where the hammering "red-heads" hopped awry, And the buzzard "raised" in the "clearing" sky And lolled and circled, as we went by Out ...
— Afterwhiles • James Whitcomb Riley
... impaled themselves, and this often to the destruction of the ship and great loss of life. We ran against one of these trees, somewhat sideways luckily for us, but it stood up on end, and amid a frightful noise, and a little momentary consternation, carried away one paddle box and wheel. A snag is only one of the numerous sources of accident in American river navigation. But one soon gets accustomed to the carelessness of danger which characterises the Americans, and on the whole travelling on their river steamers ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... woman stood speculating on sausage for dinner. As I passed her she looked up at me. She had but one tooth in the front of her head. I had become so nervous and easily affected in the last few days that the woman's face made a loathsome impression upon me. The long yellow snag looked like a little finger pointing out of her gum, and her gaze was still full of sausage as she turned it upon me. I immediately lost all appetite, and a feeling of nausea came over me. When I reached the market-place ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... boat, while above them the branches thrashed and tore at the gunwales. A moment later the craft floated free, and placing his lips to her ear, the Texan explained: "They stick down as far as they do up, an' when we pass over a shallow place they drag along the bottom. If we'd struck a snag that would have held the tree, it would have been 'good-night' for us. That root would have ripped down through the bottom, and all there'd be'n left of us is two strings of ...
— Prairie Flowers • James B. Hendryx
... in large drops from his forehead and running down into his eyes, or streaking his cheeks, while the deputy was gaily entertaining the widow, who was about equally divided in her attentions. As they proceeded Simon would say, "A very deep place here;" "bar here;" "push her off a little from that snag," etc., and the deputy would occasionally supply the widow with persimmons. While in the deepest part of the stream the widow discovered a splendid bunch of persimmons hanging from a bough which reached to the centre of the river. She declared she must have them. Simon ...
— The Expressman and the Detective • Allan Pinkerton
... City. Even if you're telling the truth I don't believe you. If you'd thought he had something valuable you'd have swiped it yourself, not come running to us. Don't bother me. If you got something, snag it. If not, ...
— Master of the Moondog • Stanley Mullen
... about what deed shall be the noble one, won't you just give me a hand, and help me save this heel of mine from a blistering shoe? The shoe was all right in school, but just now it has picked up a snag, somehow, and between the shoe and the snag, my life is ...
— The Girl Scout Pioneers - or Winning the First B. C. • Lillian C Garis
... fastened in the end of a bamboo pole, and close to this a minnow was attached to a short line, to act as a lure. When the other fish approached the captive, the pole was jerked sharply, in an attempt to snag them. On one occasion the writer saw fifty fish taken by this method ...
— The Tinguian - Social, Religious, and Economic Life of a Philippine Tribe • Fay-Cooper Cole
... he cried; and then he tried to explain how the fish had entangled the line round what an American would call a snag; and the result was that we had two fine fish to carry back to the camp, Jimmy's being tired out and readily yielding as he hauled ...
— Bunyip Land - A Story of Adventure in New Guinea • George Manville Fenn
... said. "What is there to go wrong? I've got a big day in court to-morrow and I've struck a snag, and I've got to wriggle out of it somehow, before I quit. It's nothing for you to worry about. Go to your dinner and have a ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... Porter followed them on the 16th, leaving the Osage and Lexington at Grand Ecore, and the big Eastport eight miles below, where, on the 15th, she had been sunk to her gun-deck either by a torpedo or by a snag. The admiral brought up his pump boats and after removing the guns got the ...
— History of the Nineteenth Army Corps • Richard Biddle Irwin
... of us could tell how it was, but all of a sudden we found ourselves whirled onwards by an unseen power. Though we got the paddles out, we had lost all control over our canoe. The next instant, her bow striking a rock, she was whirled round, when her stern came in contact with a snag also fixed in the crevices ...
— Snow Shoes and Canoes - The Early Days of a Fur-Trader in the Hudson Bay Territory • William H. G. Kingston
... be a stake. Such a thing would not be permitted to exist in this river.... A snag probably. Some old tree stump undermined by ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... eyes open. His mind was numb, his body trembling. A sheaf of papers in a separate folder caught his eye, production records of the Dartmouth Bearing Corporation, almost up to the date of Ingersoll's death. Shandor frowned, a snag in the chain drawing his attention. He peered at the papers, vaguely puzzled. Invoices from the Chicago plant, materials for tanks, and guns, and shells. Steel, chemicals. The same for the New Jersey plant, the same ...
— Bear Trap • Alan Edward Nourse
... if you have had the same experience, but the snag I always come up against when I'm telling a story is this dashed difficult problem of where to begin it. It's a thing you don't want to go wrong over, because one false step and you're sunk. I mean, if you fool about too long at the start, trying to establish atmosphere, as they ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... sailing for a stretch," said Ruth, as they came to a broad curve. "Did you think you were going to be capsized when we shot over that snag, Mamma?" ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf
... that your hooks are of good quality. Keep the points sharp. A tiny bit of oil stone, a file, or a piece of emery cloth are all good for this purpose. It takes a sharp point to penetrate the bony jaw of a fish. Always inspect your hook after you have caught it on a rock or snag. ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... right," he added. "Evidence was against you, but they struck an unexpected snag. You'll have to keep it up, though"; and deciding "there was nothing in the yarn," the Dandy slept in the Quarters, and I in the House, leaving the doors and ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... inventions, this one of ours was accidental. We discovered it the first time we ran on a snag in a bit of a rapid. The head-boat hung up and anchored, and the tail-boat swung around in the current, pivoting the head-boat on the snag. I was at the stern of the tail-boat, steering. In vain we tried to shove off. Then I ordered the men from the head-boat into the tail-boat. ...
— The Road • Jack London
... it. I was wondering how we could account for that if we accepted the shock theory. I guess we can't. I'm still up against it. I've struck a snag—maybe a stone ...
— The Diamond Cross Mystery - Being a Somewhat Different Detective Story • Chester K. Steele
... ran against a snag, for your grandmother said that perhaps I could get yours without your being there, for my little sister could be your proxy. 'Oh, but,' I said, 'Patty is short and chubby while Marian is tall and slender. I am afraid I could never select ...
— Little Maid Marian • Amy E. Blanchard
... in the sweet bye and bye, honey!" His tone had become offensively familiar. "It's for his good, you know. If it's the last word I ever speak I'm trying to save him from the biggest snag he ever ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... the practice call it by the former name, the enemies by the latter. We were engaged at extra-illustrating Boswell's life of Johnson, and had already got together somewhat more than eleven thousand prints when we ran against a snag, an obstacle we never could surmount. We agreed that our work would be incomplete, and therefore vain, unless we secured a picture of the book with which the great lexicographer knocked down Osborne, the bookseller ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field
... the car and pulled out the rail. It was the one they had ripped from the ties north of Calhoun. They forced the straight end of it under the track, leaving the bent end projecting toward the pursuers—a scarcely visible snag which would rip into ...
— Tom of the Raiders • Austin Bishop
... leaving him to fish the rest of the brook, while I went back to that upper path to look up two or three special arbutus clumps that I knew, but seeing his depression over the snag incident, I could not suggest this. Instead I followed the stream with him, accepting his urgent offer of all the best pools, while he, taking what was left, drew out perfectly good trout from the most unhopeful-looking bits ...
— More Jonathan Papers • Elisabeth Woodbridge
... foot upon a thwart, the other hanging overside so laxly that occasional ripples lapped the run-over heel. From time to time he scanned shore and river for familiar points of interest—some remembered snag that showed the tip of one gnarled branch. Or he marked a newly fallen palmetto, already rotting in the water, which must be added to that map of vast detail that he carried in his head. But for the most part his broad black face was turned up ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... smart trick; used to catch people. I'm talking about things that are practical. You'll see. I'll bet you these blamed fools are going to strike a snag one of these days, or they'll leave things so that there'll be a fall-down. But what need they care ...
— Radio Boys Cronies • Wayne Whipple and S. F. Aaron
... Anninger; it was glorious, we kept on tumbling into the snow; the snow lay fairly thick, especially up there, where hardly anyone comes. As we were going home such a ridiculous thing happened to Hella; she caught her foot on a snag and tore off the whole sole of a brand new shoe. She had to tie it on with a string, and even then she limped so badly that every one believed she had sprained her ankle tobogganing. Her grandmother was frightfully angry and said: "That comes of such unladylike ...
— A Young Girl's Diary • An Anonymous Young Girl
... to one side with him. Major Holt had promised to send a first-class man to meet Joe at this place, with orders to take instructions from Joe. Joe said curtly: "You're to snag as many Security men as you can, place them more or less out of sight under the Platform here, and tell them to turn off their walkie-talkies and wait. No matter what happens, they're to wait right here until ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... to his boat, which lay moored to a snag alongside the bank, trodden hard to the consistency of asphalte by a hundred bare feet. He stepped over the gunwale and made his way aft with a practised balancing step. The after part of the canoe was decked in and closed with lock and key. The key hung at his watch-chain—a large chain with square ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... the move again over familiar ground and soon found themselves in tents just outside Mametz Wood. After a week spent on working parties they moved up to the front line, W Company, now under 2nd Lieut. R.H. Wharrier, being in front in Snag trench and the other three Companies in close support in the Flers line. On the night of Saturday, the 4th November, X, Y and Z Companies took over the front line in preparation for an attack on the Butte de Warlencourt on the Sunday ...
— The Story of the 6th Battalion, The Durham Light Infantry - France, April 1915-November 1918 • Unknown
... people will allow the party to remain in power. Changes of administration depend a great deal on the feeling of the country. If crops are bad and money is tight, the people blame the administration, whether it is responsible or not. If a ship going down the river strikes a snag, or encounters a storm, a cry goes up against the captain. It may not have been his fault, but he is blamed, all the same, and the passengers at once clamor for another captain. So it ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... into an eddy just before sunset, and had made fast to a snag and a live root when the little boat came dropping down in the edge of the current hardly forty feet distant, with the man leaning on his sweeps, watching her every motion, especially fastening his ...
— The River Prophet • Raymond S. Spears
... he began, using his perpetual smile, "we've struck a little snag. But remember the philosophy of the country—what you can't do to-day, do when you can. ...
— On the Edge of the Arctic - An Aeroplane in Snowland • Harry Lincoln Sayler
... cannot work. They pay a good price for their indolence, as the neglect of their craft and their loose ideas of navigation seldom fail to bring them to grief before they even reach the Mississippi at Cairo. Their heavy, flat-bottomed boat gets impaled upon a snag or the sharp top of a sawyer; and as the luckless craft spins round with the current, a hole is punched through the bottom, the water rushes in and takes possession, driving the inexperienced crew to the little boat usually carried in tow ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop
... than from me. I didn't want to seem to make trouble for her. So, while I was wondering what to do about it, she headed right in, leaving me with the valise and the umberella, and a kind of qualmy feeling that the old lady might strike a snag. ...
— Love, The Fiddler • Lloyd Osbourne
... a child, patching and darning was stylish. Soon as the washing was brung in the clothes had to be sorted out and every snag place patched nice. Folks had better made clothes and had to take care of em. Clothes don't last no time now. White folks had fine clothes but they didn't have nigh as many as ...
— Slave Narratives: Arkansas Narratives - Arkansas Narratives, Part 6 • Works Projects Administration
... the reporter had figured it out that the city was a mirror reflecting himself, he grew excited. That was the kind of idea he had always been looking for. But at night in his bedroom when he started to write he hit a snag. He had thought he held in his mind the secret of the city. Yet when he came to write about it the secret slipped away and left him with nothing. He sat looking out of his bedroom window, noticing that the telephone poles in the dark alley looked ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... foreman himself was making for a grounded log, one of the first of the drive. It had caught upon some snag, and was swinging broadside out, into the stream. Let two or three more timbers catch with it and there would be the nucleus of a jam that might result in much trouble ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr
... Gerald, contemptuously. The idea was indeed absurd of finding a snag in the River Rhone; for a snag is formed by a floating tree, which is washed into the river by the undermining of the banks, and is then carried down until it gets lodged. There are millions of such trees in the Mississippi, but none ...
— Rollo in Geneva • Jacob Abbott
... that shows that one's life is looked out for, when he ain't looking out for it himself. In fact, any of these stools here will float you, sir, should the boat hit a snag, and go down in the dark. But, since you want one in your room, pray take this one," handing it to him. "I think I can recommend this one; the tin part," rapping it with his knuckles, "seems so perfect—sounds ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... against a serious difficulty. It would seem to stiffen his backbone and make him more prolific of new ideas. For a time I thought I was foolish to imagine such a thing, but I could never get away from the impression that he really appeared happy when he ran up against a serious snag. That was in my green days, and I soon learned that the failure of an experiment never discourages him unless it is by reason of the carelessness of the man making it. Then Edison gets disgusted. If it fails on its merits, he doesn't worry or fret about ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... A devilfish-like snag held tree and burden. With a burst of speed Philip swam alongside. Winifred? Thank God! Still alive, although unconscious; face white, eyes closed. As he grasped ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman
... it behoved all loyal subjects to remove it. The people poured down from their villages to the moist, warm valley of poppy-fields; and the King and I went with them. Hundreds of dressed deodar-logs had caught on a snag of rock, and the river was bringing down more logs every minute to complete the blockade. The water snarled and wrenched and worried at the timber, and the population of the State began prodding the nearest logs with a pole ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling
... listening," he announced coolly, "and I think it high time I took a share in the conversation. You seem to have run up against a snag, Mr. Douglas. You say Frank Harmon is dead. That's good riddance if it's true. ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... from Bateese. Bateese, who cared nothing for sport, had paddled up-stream to inspect the next reach of the river, and there, at the first ford, had found the moose lying dead and warm, with the ripple running over his flank and his gigantic horns high out of the water like a snag. ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... and then the boats grated against a snag, which reminded them of the danger which they would have to encounter when returning. The rocks and snags could not, as they were then steering, do them much injury, but it would be a very different matter ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... Handel. 'I will hold up mine feeble hands for mine oldt friendt Custos (Arne's name was Augustine), for I know not who I wouldt waidt for, over andt above mine oldt rival, Master Dom (meaning Pepusch). Only by your bermission, I vill dake a snag of your ham, andt a slice of French roll, or a modicum of chicken; for to dell you the honest fagd, I am all pote famished, for I laid me down on mine billow in bed the lastd nightd widout mine supper, at the instance of mine ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... snag," replied Douglas, as he pitched into him; and before the fellow had time to reflect, he lay ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... portions beneath, so that the movement of the flow was still further retarded. At the lower end of the valley the lava occupied a portion of a body of water now known as Lake Bidwell; its rugged front made a dam across the valley above, forming Snag Lake. The stumps of the trees which were killed by the water when the lake was ...
— The Western United States - A Geographical Reader • Harold Wellman Fairbanks
... mistake. I've give a heap of study in my time to this question of licker drams. I have observed that when you combine in a gen'elman them two features jest mentioned—a Adamses' apple that's always running up and down like a cat squirrel on a snag, and eyes away 'round yonder so's he can see both ways at once without moving his head—you've got a gen'elman that's specially ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... impossible to stop. Inventing and whittling faster than ever, I made another hickory clock, shaped like a scythe to symbolize the scythe of Father Time. The pendulum is a bunch of arrows symbolizing the flight of time. It hangs on a leafless mossy oak snag showing the effect of time, and on the snath is written, "All flesh is grass." This, especially the inscription, rather pleased father, and, of course, mother and all my sisters and brothers admired it. Like the first it indicates ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir
... charr'd laths, their white foreheads whole and unhurt out of the flames; By the mechanic's wife with her babe at her nipple interceding for every person born, Three scythes at harvest whizzing in a row from three lusty angels with shirts bagg'd out at their waists, The snag-tooth'd hostler with red hair redeeming sins past and to come, Selling all he possesses, traveling on foot to fee lawyers for his brother and sit by him while he is tried for forgery; What was strewn in the amplest strewing the square rod about me, and not filling the square ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... thought his hook had caught in a snag, but he was greatly surprised after carefully pulling in his line, to find on the end of it a sluggish fish four feet long, and as large around as a stovepipe. We were to wait here till the 3d of September for Powell, but on the 29th of August three ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... again. Motoza wouldn't have had any trouble in wiping out two young tenderfeet like you, but he'd likely run agin a snag when he tried ...
— Two Boys in Wyoming - A Tale of Adventure (Northwest Series, No. 3) • Edward S. Ellis
... that would not tear her raw throat, a place to lie and recoup her strength after the chilling winter night—these were the only things that counted now. Though she knew it not, in her eyes burned the faint light of fever. When a snag caught her snowshoe and tripped her, there was hysteria ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... paid. So far so good. But then, as her employer, undertake to hand out to her exactly the same treatment which the man holding a like position expects and accepts. There's where Mr. Boss strikes a snag. The salary she will take—oh, yes—but she arrogates to herself the sweet boon of weeping when things distress her, and, when things harass her, of going off into tantrums of temper which no man in authority, however patient, would ...
— 'Oh, Well, You Know How Women Are!' AND 'Isn't That Just Like a Man!' • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... Since the capacity of a stream to carry matter in suspension is proportional to its velocity, it follows that any circumstance tending to retard the rate of flow will induce deposition. Thus a fall in the gradient at any point in the course of a stream; any snag, projection or dam, impeding the current; the reduced velocity caused by the overflowing of streams in flood and the dissipation of their energy where they enter a lake or the sea, are all contributing causes to alluviation, or the deposition of streamborne sediment. It is ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... on it a little way, Bo," said Horatio, getting interested, "and throw your line over there by that cypress snag. That ...
— The Arkansaw Bear - A Tale of Fanciful Adventure • Albert Bigelow Paine
... Bunny, is not the word for that glorified snag, or for the mollusks, its inhabitants. But they started by wounding my vanity, so perhaps I am prejudiced, after all. I sprung myself upon them as a shipwrecked sailor—a sole survivor—stripped in the sea and landed without a stitch—yet they took no more interest ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... garage felt cold against the soles of his shoes. Coulter stamped his feet as he turned on the heater and moved toward the door. It stuck—he had forgotten about that—and he swore lustily as he exerted strength he had forgotten ever possessing to yank it clear of the snag and across the front of ...
— A World Apart • Samuel Kimball Merwin
... the loud speaker in Remington Solander's tomb would not carry that far; it was not strong enough. So we went to the executors of his estate and ran up against another snag—nothing in the radio outfit in the tomb could be altered in any way whatever. That was in the will. The same loud speaker had to be maintained, the same wave-length had to be kept, the same makes of batteries had to be used, the same style of tubes had to be used. Remington ...
— Solander's Radio Tomb • Ellis Parker Butler
... passed six days of desert, without the slightest appearance of vegetation, and a little branch of the snag, (Caparis sodada,) was brought as a comfort and curiosity. On the following, day, they had alternately plains of sand and loose gravel, and had a distant view of some hills to the westward. While Major Denham was dozing on his horse ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... the cinches are tight" when he turns the horse loose. If the cinches are loose, the saddle may turn when the horse rolls; or if the reins are down, the horse may graze for hours. Either loose reins or loose cinches may cripple a horse by entangling his feet, or by catching on a snag in the woods. Once loose, the horse generally starts off home on a trot. But he is not always faithful. When a number of these horses are together, they will occasionally play too long on the way. A great liking for grass sometimes tempts them into a ditch, where ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills
... was turning a bend in the road, I caught sight of a mountain chickadee flitting to a dead snag on the slope at the right, the next moment slipping into a small hole leading inside. I climbed up to the shelf, a small level nook among the tall pines on the mountain side, to inspect her retreat, for ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... spills A ghostly gray and the bent moon sallows The moor with her wicked flame? Why do the gibbering croons of the hag In her hut by the wood Go muttering, muttering in my blood— Till the hoot of an owl On the snag of a tomb Breaks out of the gloom Like the wail of ...
— Nirvana Days • Cale Young Rice
... the Red Un in agony, holding his jaw. Owing to the fact that he lay far back in an upper bunk, it took time to drag him into the light. It took more time to get his mouth open; once open, the Red Un pointed to a snag that should have given him trouble if it didn't, and ...
— Love Stories • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... light as the wind in summer from tuft to tuft between the muddy, gurgling water holes. Just as she came near a big black pool her foot slipped and she was nigh tumbling in. She grabbed with both hands at a snag near by, to steady herself with, but as she touched it, it twined itself round her wrists, like a pair of handcuffs, and gripped her so that she couldn't move. She pulled and twisted and fought, but it was no good. She was fast, and ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... arching moss and vines that trailed from the trees on the bank. Now and then a snag would be struck, and on such occasions Ruth would start ...
— The Moving Picture Girls Under the Palms - Or Lost in the Wilds of Florida • Laura Lee Hope
... again setting into motion the fiendish echoes. He was naked to the waist; he had lost flesh; he was haggard, worn, dirty, wet. While he pulled on a shirt Nas Ta Bega made the rope fast to a snag of a log of driftwood embedded in the sand, and the boat swung to shore. It was perhaps thirty feet long by half as many wide, crudely built of rough-hewn boards. The steering-gear was a long pole with a plank nailed to the end. The craft was empty save for another pole and ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey
... for the purpose of "padding," that is, filling space, or when they strike a snag in writing upon subjects of which they know little or nothing. The young writer should steer clear of it and learn to express his thoughts and ideas as briefly as possible commensurate with lucidity ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... office of the United States and judge of the supreme court of the State of Illinois, and was subsequently elected to the senate of the United States; but when he was about to take his seat he ran up against the snag that is found in section 3 of article I of the constitution of the United States, which provides that a senator must have been a citizen of the United States for nine years before election, and it appeared that the general ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... thrifty them days that she buys all her own an' my child Abby's clothes with the Injuns she pots. Little Abby used to scout for her maw. "Yere comes another!" little Abby would cry, as she stampedes up all breathless, her childish face aglow. With that, my wife would take her hands outen the wash-tub, snag onto that savage with her little old Winchester, and quit winner ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... nine. Lord, I wish I'd got here earlier, before his bed-time. I tried to git the driver to hurry up, but first one thing happened, then another. I want to see what the little chap 'll do with this rattler; these blamed little bells set up a jinglin' noise every time the hack struck a snag." ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... there should be a trout, and to that little place the grasshopper was cast, when snap! went my leader. I put on another hook and another grasshopper, but the result was precisely the same, so I concluded there must be a snag there, although I had supposed that I knew a fish from a snag! I tried one or two other places, but there was no variation—and each time I ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... her merry mood; his anxiety was to steer the conversation away from Simeon, and he had run against a snag at the start. ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... the gentle embrace with a tenderness that bespoke unutterable regard. It hurt her to know that gay, light-hearted Arline Thayer who had always appeared to slip through life so smoothly, should have run against an ugly snag. ...
— Grace Harlowe's Golden Summer • Jessie Graham Flower
... commerce on the high seas. This latter object is, for all I can see, in principle the same as internal improvements. The driving a pirate from the track of commerce on the broad ocean, and the removing of a snag from its more narrow path in the Mississippi River, cannot, I think, be distinguished in principle. Each is done to save life and property, and ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... Gammie writes:—"A nest of the Grey-cheeked Flycatcher-Warbler, taken on the 8th May in large forest at 6000 feet, contained three hard-set eggs. It was suspended to a snag among the moss growing on the stem of a small tree at five feet up. The moss supported it more than did the snag. It is a solid cup-shaped structure, made of green moss and lined with very fine roots. Externally it measures 31/2 inches across and 21/4 deep; internally 2 inches ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... e'en as I tell ye. He's no a'thegither sae void o' sense neither; he has a gloaming sight o' what's reasonable—that is anes and awa'—a glisk and nae mair; but he's crack-brained and cockle-headed about his nipperty-tipperty poetry nonsense—He'll glowr at an auld-warld barkit aik-snag as if it were a queezmaddam in full bearing; and a naked craig, wi' a bum jawing ower't, is unto him as a garden garnisht with flowering knots and choice pot-herbs. Then he wad rather claver wi' ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... the chances are he'd think twice before loaning you his boat," Max told him. "In the first place he'd expect you to snag the craft, and sink the same, because you do everything with such a rush and whoop. And then again, the way things look around here every boat that's owned within five miles of town will be needed to rescue people from ...
— Afloat on the Flood • Lawrence J. Leslie
... The only snag in the latter theory was the fact of our accident. Assuming that I had to get involved in the mess, there were easier ways to introduce me than by planning a bad crack-up that could have been fatal, even granting the close proximity of the Harrison tribe to come to the rescue. ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith
... cried Max. "If something has happened to your boat, why, head for the shore, and paddle hard. It ain't so far away but you can reach it easy enough. You must have hit a snag, and punched a hole in the skin ...
— The Strange Cabin on Catamount Island • Lawrence J. Leslie
... had hesitated and her father's pistol hadn't been hard by, she would have recovered her poise and deceived her husband. I believe that if Emma Bovary had escaped that snag of debt she would have continued to fool Charles. And I believe Mildred Lawson married at last and fooled herself into the belief that she had a superior soul, misunderstood by the world and her husband. There is no telling how vermicular are the wrigglings of mean souls. ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... it's clever. That's the start. What next? Murray keeps to the play of the loyal friend and protector. It's all smooth to him, and only needs the playing. The store and its trade, and his fortune are left by Allan to his widow. He's completed his first step without a snag cropping up. ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... the old miser ran foul of a snag. A market-man had watched him for some time purloining his vegetables, and on the first of the year, sent in a bill of several dollars, for turnips, potatoes, parsnips, &c. The old miser, of course, refused to pay the bill, denying ever having had "the goods." But the countryman called, ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... Evansville, Indiana, about seven hundred miles below Pittsburgh, a great shock was felt on the fleet, and a shower of coal was sent flying into the air. The cry "Snag! Snag!" was heard on all sides, the big engines of the "Red Lion" were stopped and reversed and the headway of the fleet was checked, as it slowly swung to the shore. All hands rushed to the damaged barge and found that a snag, a sunken log, had penetrated ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... Heav'n perform'd a victor's vows: He bar'd an ancient oak of all her boughs; Then on a rising ground the trunk he plac'd, Which with the spoils of his dead foe he grac'd. The coat of arms by proud Mezentius worn, Now on a naked snag in triumph borne, Was hung on high, and glitter'd from afar, A trophy sacred to the God of War. Above his arms, fix'd on the leafless wood, Appear'd his plumy crest, besmear'd with blood: His brazen buckler on the left was seen; Truncheons of shiver'd lances hung between; And on ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... be seen; so on she went, stepping as light as the wind in summer from tuft to tuft between the greedy gurgling water holes. Just as she came near a big black pool her foot slipped and she was nigh tumbling in. She grabbed with both hands at a snag near by to steady herself with, but as she touched it, it twined itself round her wrists, like a pair of handcuffs, and gript her so that she couldn't move. She pulled and twisted and fought, but it was no good. She was fast, ...
— More English Fairy Tales • Various
... projecting trees, the snapping, cracking, screaming, hallooing, and confusion. As fast as we cleared ourselves of one tree, the current bore us down upon another; as soon as we were clear above water, we were foul and entangled below. It was a pretty general average; but, what was worse than all a snag had intercepted and unshipped our rudder, and we were floating away from it, as it still remained fixed upon the sunken tree. We had no boat with us, not oven a dug-out—(a canoe made out of the trunk of a tree)—so one of the men climbed on shore by the limbs of ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... the fire of enthusiasm had never burned. He was eminently conservative, and looked with wary suspicion on anything that appeared like earnestness. In the midst of a driving, bustling Western city, he stuck in the mud of his German phlegm, like a snag in the swift current of the Mississippi. Yet Mr. Ludolph found him a most valuable assistant. He kept things straight. Under his minute supervision everything had to be right on Saturday night as well as on Monday morning, on the ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... suggest another, I suppose," she broke in scornfully. "Well, I may as well inform you that you are about to strike a snag," she went on, a trifle inelegantly in her desire to be emphatic. "We intend to see to it that the mother of that baby gives it a name of ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... the logs which formed the foundation of their floor were quietly floating in the water before the cabin! The submerged obstacle or snag which had torn them from their fastening was still holding the cabin fast. Hemmingway saw the danger. He ran along the narrow ledge to the point of contact and unhesitatingly leaped into the icy cold water. It reached his armpits before his feet struck the obstacle,—evidently ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... it?" he said, rather boyishly. "This is all I've got. It's an Indian charm I had given me down in New Mexico, but the tree is alive and growing. It isn't a sunken snag." ...
— Kit of Greenacre Farm • Izola Forrester
... 'my man took his shoes off and went around in his stockinged feet!' I couldn't understand, though, why he hadn't thought of that before. I went back to Robert Blackburn's room and got one of his shoes, and ran into a snag again. The sole of the shoe was a trifle larger than the footprints. Every one of his shoes I tried was the same way. I argued that the handkerchief was enough, but I wanted this other evidence. I simply had to clear up ...
— The Abandoned Room • Wadsworth Camp
... was pliant, And far from defiant —"And servile," no doubt you retort!— But if you struck a snag on A bottle-green dragon, Who filled up two-thirds of your court, And curled up his tail on your new tin roof, And made your piazza groan under his hoof, Would you threaten and thunder, Or just knuckle under Completely, I wonder, If put ...
— Grimm Tales Made Gay • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... door," gurgled Joan. "He got roped in. He fell an easy victim to the snag parade—and women fainted and men wept when the man of great possessions and the pointed woman took ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... a snag somewhere," said Bob. "After we get everything assembled, we've still got to run our leading-in wire down to my bedroom. But I don't think that will ...
— The Radio Boys' First Wireless - Or Winning the Ferberton Prize • Allen Chapman
... you've got, Merritt," suggested Rob, who did not give up quite so easily, because of a sudden snag in ...
— The Boy Scouts on Belgian Battlefields • Lieut. Howard Payson
... kettle of fish brewing down there," he resumed darkly, and paused again, glanced at the ceiling critically as if searching for leaks, smacked his lips and murmured confidentially a single word: "Snag!" ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... for Dick never liked to boast in advance of what he expected to accomplish, having learned from sad experience that very often a snag is apt to sink the craft freighted with hopes, and when ...
— Dick the Bank Boy - Or, A Missing Fortune • Frank V. Webster
... moment, then answered, "Stand on it at 80 for 12,000 shares. I will be there in a second." He dropped the receiver. "Jim, we have struck a snag. Arthur Perkins, whom I left on guard at the pole, says Barry Conant has just jumped in and supplied all the bids. He has it down to 81 and is offering it in 5,000 blocks and is aggressive. I must get there quick," and he ...
— Friday, the Thirteenth • Thomas W. Lawson
... in English; "if we should strike a snag or any thing, broadside on, the boat would roll ...
— Rollo in Geneva • Jacob Abbott
... It is a small creature, less than a common deer; a fair-sized buck weighs about one hundred pounds. It is known by its rich buff color with pure white patches, by having only two hoofs on each foot, and by the horns which are of true horn, like those of a goat, but have a snag or branch and are shed each year. In the female the horns are little points about an ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America
... upon us, from the superior whiteness of its column of "exhaust," penetrating the bank of dark gray fog; and occasionally the echoes are awakened by the burly roar of its whistle, which, in times like this, acts as a fog-horn. But the snag is an insidious enemy, not revealing itself until we are within a rod or two, and then there is a quick cry of warning from the stern sheets—"Hard a-port!" or "Starboard, quick!" and only a strong side-pull, aided by W——'s paddle, sends us free from the jagged, branching mass ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... made a corresponding hole in the under side of the top log. Then, prying up the eave log, he put the door in place, let the eave log down again, and the door was hung. A string to it made an outside fastening when it was twisted around a projecting snag in the wall, and a peg thrust into a hole within made an inside fastener. Some logs, with fir boughs and dried grass, formed a bunk within. This left only the window, and for lack of better cover he fastened over it a piece of muslin ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... while dipping about in the margin shallows, he either sets off with a rapid whir to some other feeding-ground up or down the stream, or alights on some half-submerged rock or snag out in the current, and immediately begins to nod and courtesy like a wren, turning his head from side to side with many other odd dainty movements that never fail to fix the attention of ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... days after that adventure, the Caroline, the largest and finest steam-boat upon the Mississippi, struck a snag in coming down the stream, and sank immediately. The river, however, being very low, the upper decks remained above water, and help coming down from the neighbouring plantations, all the passengers were soon brought on shore ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... that I stole one of the Earl's cuff-buttons! Wouldn't that frost you? I've been trying to get it into his head that he's struck a snag here, but he can't see it that way," replied Launcelot, rising from the piano-stool and ...
— The Adventures of the Eleven Cuff-Buttons • James Francis Thierry
... began, "of the way the Lord has favoured us. I am proud all the time of his Elders, his servants, and his handmaids. And when they do well I am prouder still. I don't know but I'll get so proud that I'll be four or five times prouder than I am now. As I once said to Sidney Rigdon, our boat is an old snag boat and has never been out of Snag-harbour. But it will root up the snags, run them down, split them, and scatter them to the four quarters. Our ship is the old ship of Zion; and nothing that runs foul of her can ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... the crowd have nicer manners than our dear Eleanor and are better students," Mary Brooks had said to Betty. "Otherwise I'm afraid your ship of state will run into a snag of ...
— Betty Wales Freshman • Edith K. Dunton
... soon as he was thrown into the deep river he sank below the surface; so his enemies went away believing that they had seen the last of him. But, in reality, he was carried down, half drowned, below the next bend in the river, where he fortunately came across a 'snag' floating in the water (a snag is, you know, a part of a tree or bush which floats very nearly under the surface of the water); and he held on to this snag, and by great good luck eventually came ashore some two or three miles down the river. At the place where he landed ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... ate their breakfast rapidly and in silence. A half hour later they were galloping furiously for Los Angeles, escorted by the equally enthusiastic Hill. The river was low and quiet. The horses swam it without let from tide or snag. Even Adan forgot to cross himself. Beyond was the high hill that lies directly to the north of Los Angeles. Its surface seemed in motion; it looked like a ...
— The Valiant Runaways • Gertrude Atherton |
