"Snail" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a snail, and confident the others would do their part, Keith thrust his knife blade deep into the narrow crack, and began probing after the latch. In spite of all caution this effort caused a slight noise, and suddenly he started back, at the sound of ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish
... things. The large hall within the elf hill was splendidly decorated; the floor had been washed with moonshine, and the walls had been rubbed with magic ointment, so that they glowed like tulip-leaves in the light. In the kitchen were frogs roasting on the spit, and dishes preparing of snail skins, with children's fingers in them, salad of mushroom seed, hemlock, noses and marrow of mice, beer from the marsh woman's brewery, and sparkling salt-petre wine from the grave cellars. These were all substantial ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... came near Temple Bar, my heart fell a thumping. Not that I forgot the place was deserted and the old home broken; but because it reminded me of what once was before all these troubles began. I crawled at a snail's pace, wishing to put off the pang as long as possible. In fancy I was at my case, as I had been a year ago, clicking the letters into my stick, in time to the chirping of my little mistress who sang at her work within. At my side I could hear the dull groaning of the heavy press, and ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... he perched upon a tiny rock near by and screamed, "Caw," quite suddenly, as one child says, "Boo," to another, to surprise him. Then the bird sang his chatter tune, and found a shallow place near the bank, where he splashed and bathed. After that, the Blue-eyed Girl showed him a little water-snail. He turned it over in his beak and dropped it. It meant no more to him than a pebble. "I think you'll like to eat it, Corbie," said the Brown-eyed Boy, breaking the shell and giving it to him again; "even people ...
— Bird Stories • Edith M. Patch
... other worms the eyes are entirely wanting, or their existence is very doubtful. Whether the black points at the extremities of what Swammerdam calls the horns of the common snail, are organs which really possess the power of vision, is ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 20, No. 562, Saturday, August 18, 1832. • Various
... which was then supplied with beef from Twofold Bay. Forty bullocks were put on board the 'Waterwitch' in five days, and in forty-eight hours they were offered for sale in Hobarton, and fetched fourteen pounds ten shillings a head—all but one, a snail-horned brute, which was very wild. When he landed, a number of soldiers were at drill in the paddock, and he charged the redcoats at once. They prepared to receive cavalry, but he broke through the ranks, scattered the citizens the whole length of Liverpool ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... cross the Hudson until the 4th of December, moving snail-like, although he knew that Washington's army was ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... passed below going at a snail's pace while Frank was still a short distance in the rear and Mr. Temple and Tom Barnum were not yet in sight. It was an open touring car with the top folded back. There were three men in it, one on the seat beside the driver and the third in the rear. ...
— The Radio Boys on the Mexican Border • Gerald Breckenridge
... pretty bad," mused Pawnee Brown. "But I'll go slow—it may be only a trick," and away he crawled as silently as a snail ...
— The Boy Land Boomer - Dick Arbuckle's Adventures in Oklahoma • Ralph Bonehill
... A porch which has as many spiral windings in it as the shell of the periwinkle, or sea-snail.—Steevens. ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... we asked each other. The shouts and gesticulations of the spectators soon told us as to his whereabouts. The peddler's horse had not yet got half way round! A snail could have crawled almost as fast. The animal could not step more than six inches at ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... history is not known, but the infectious stage is undoubtedly taken in with the feed or water, infection being spread by the eggs of the parasite contained in the feces of infested animals. The eggs are perhaps swallowed by some small creature (an insect, worm, or snail) which acts as an intermediate host, and which when accidentally swallowed by a cow while grazing or drinking carries with it into her stomach the infectious stage ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... stare at it, and no more did we. But it was more comfortable to talk with the chair standing still; for though to look at one going it seems to crawl along like a snail, I can tell you to keep up with it you have to step out pretty fast, faster than Peterkin could manage without a bit of running every minute or so, which is certainly not comfortable, and faster than I myself ...
— Peterkin • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... carrying the experiment still further we might apply the speed test. In a 100-yard dash a few men would be found to be particularly fast, a few others would trail away behind at a snail's pace, while the big crowd of men would make the distance in ...
— Principles of Teaching • Adam S. Bennion
... a little past sunrise, but there was no hint of early summer freshness in the noxious air of the sleeping-car as it toiled like a snail over the infinity of prairie. From behind the green-striped curtains of the berths, now the sound of restless turning and now a long-drawn sigh signified the uneasy slumber due to stifling ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... the snail, of course; and he shuns the heat of the ground, not the Pleiades. Here again is a maxim deeply involved ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... Occasionally you pass a deal table, on which are exposed pen'orths of pickled salmon (fennel included), in little white saucers: oysters, with shells as large as cheese-plates, and divers specimens of a species of snail (wilks, we think they are called), floating in a somewhat bilious-looking green liquid. Cigars, too, are in great demand; gentlemen must smoke, of course, and here they are, two a penny, in a regular authentic ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... not a new coach too; therefore, resolving to ruin Tom, she complained to the King that he had behaved very insolently to her. The King sent for him in a rage. Tom, to escape his fury, crept into a large, empty snail-shell, and there lay for some time, when, peeping out of the shell, he saw a fine butterfly on the ground. He ventured forth and got astride the butterfly, which took wing, and mounted into the air with little Tom on his back. Away he flew straight ...
— The History Of Tom Thumb and Other Stories. • Anonymous
... Wilton responded. "We shall never view things in the same light. You are not the man of the world you should be, Walter. Men of half your merit will eclipse you, winning opulence and distinction—while you, with your common sense notions, will be plodding on at a snail's pace. You are behind the age, and a stranger to ...
— Home Lights and Shadows • T. S. Arthur
... and when they moved, the red, blue and yellow lights passed one over the other, staining an inch of the brown earth beneath with a spot of the most intricate colour. The light fell either upon the smooth, grey back of a pebble, or, the shell of a snail with its brown, circular veins, or falling into a raindrop, it expanded with such intensity of red, blue and yellow the thin walls of water that one expected them to burst and disappear. Instead, the drop was left in a second silver grey once more, and the light now settled upon the flesh ...
— Monday or Tuesday • Virginia Woolf
... the act of wriggling his long chin into his ample neckerchief. He could not ask you how do you do, or say in answer to that question, "I thank you, sare, very well," without stamping prettily with his foot, as if cracking a snail, and tossing his chin into the air as if he were going to balance a ladder upon it. Then, though his features were compressed into a small, monkeyfied compass, they were themselves, individually, upon a magnificent scale. It was as if ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... looking admiringly at ARPACHSHAD, who had taken off his coat, and was carefully folding it up, preparatory to overtaking a snail, whose upward march on a peach-tree his keen eye had noted; "but that wasn't my fault. I was dragged into it against my will. It came about this way. Months ago, when Mr. G.'s tour was settled, they said nothing would do but ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., Nov. 22, 1890 • Various
... this: I'm not going to let my stick travel like a snail after a cabbage-leaf this time. I'm going to cut as I should with a sword, only I'm going to hit as if you were made of glass, so as not to ...
— The Young Castellan - A Tale of the English Civil War • George Manville Fenn
... of your farms, Who from the cornfields drive the insidious foe, And from your harvest keep a hundred harms; Even the blackest of them all, the crow, Renders good service as your man-at-arms, Crushing the beetle in his coat of mail, And crying havoc on the slug and snail." —FROM ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph, Volume 1, Number 2, February, 1897 • anonymous
... row?" shouted back the delinquent, hearing her at last, and wriggling himself in from the window like a snail withdrawing itself into its shell, turning round the while his face, slightly flushed with the exertion, to hers—"Anything ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson
... He went a snail's pace, and at last dismounted, and groped his way. He got more than one fall in the snow, and thought himself very fortunate, when, at last, something black towered before him, and it ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... insult my daughter, suh?" he thundered. "By thunder, suh, I've a good mind to make you smart right proper for your lack of manners, suh! How dare you, suh? You—you contemptible little—little snail, suh! Snail, suh!" And quite satisfied at thus selecting the most fitting word, glaring fiercely and twisting his white mustache and imperial with a very martial air, he seated ...
— Garrison's Finish - A Romance of the Race-Course • W. B. M. Ferguson
... different," said Pepsy. "If people have something the matter with their hips you can't fix them. Because, anyway, if they're going to die on a Friday even snail water won't fix them." ...
— Pee-wee Harris • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... slight delay of the train, and the snail's pace of the taxicab through the traffic, it would be quite six o'clock before she reached Mrs. Hetty Hills' house in Washington Square; he would be absolutely ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... sidewalk. I resolve to be more careful. The next time I am on a bicycle it is night-time and my acetylene-gas-lamp is misbehaving. I cherish the sickly flame carefully, because of the ordinance. I am in a hurry, but I ride at a snail's pace so as not to jar out the flickering flame. I reach the city limits; I am beyond the jurisdiction of the ordinance; and I proceed to scorch to make up for lost time. And half a mile farther on I am "pinched" by a bull, and the ...
— The Road • Jack London
... of hue, and resort to their burrows whenever disturbed in their natural haunts. What they subsist on it is difficult to say, as they are too harmless and insignificant to attack any other animal beyond a mouse or a snail. They are represented as being very difficult to tame, but when domesticated show no disposition to return to their former mode of life. The lady of the Mexican Minister, when in this city, had one of these dogs as a boudoir pet; it was lively and barked quite ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... thrown in, a quantity of the same; and I could see also from all the surrounding circumstances, especially the pallid faces of the crowd, that there was something sad about it all. The horse moved slowly along, at almost a snail's pace, while behind walked a poor, sad couple with their heads bowed down, and each with a hand on the tail-board of the cart. They ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... ever beset by a dun? ducked by the Goody from thine own window, when "creeping like snail unwillingly" to morning prayers?—Ibid., Vol. IV. ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... the body of certain snails and encysts. The sporocyst, as it is now called, develops into a third generation known as redia which escape from the cyst. The daughter redia or cercaria, as they are now termed, leave the body of the snail and finally become encysted on the stems of grass, cresses and weeds. When taken into the digestive tract of the animal grazing over infested ground, the immature flukes are freed by the digestive juices. They ...
— Common Diseases of Farm Animals • R. A. Craig, D. V. M.
... accompanied the Mistress and the Master. Unknown to the old dog, these walks had been shortened, mercifully, and slowed down, to accommodate themselves to Lad's waning strength: But the time came when even a half-mile, at snail-pace, over a smooth road, was too much for his wind ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... junction of Gordon's corps with Mahone and Early, with thirty miles of wagons, containing the special plunder of the Post Doctors, Quartermasters and Post Commissaries of Richmond, they went at a snail's pace, and it would have been no trouble for an enterprising enemy to have overtaken them. Until they arrived at Amelia Courthouse, on the 4th of April, although a body of the enemy had followed them up, no attack had been made, and it was only after leaving the Courthouse that ...
— Lee's Last Campaign • John C. Gorman
... to the top again, and there lie soaring till some shadow affrights them again: when they lie upon the top of the water, look out the best Chub, which you setting your self in a fit place, may very easily do, and move your Rod as softly as a Snail moves, to that Chub you intend to catch; let your bait fall gently upon the water three or four inches before him, and he will infallibly take the bait, and you will be as sure to catch him; for he is one of the leather-mouth'd ...
— The Compleat Angler - Facsimile of the First Edition • Izaak Walton
... to me what speedily became the leading occupation of his culminating years, Crest Hill. But all the world has heard of that extravagant place which grew and changed its plans as it grew, and bubbled like a salted snail, and burgeoned and bulged and evermore grew. I know not what delirium of pinnacles and terraces and arcades and corridors glittered at last upon the uplands of his mind; the place, for all that its expansion was terminated ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... a Cupid on a snail! And page 230 is blank," said the journalist. "Then there are two more blank pages before we come to the word it is such a joy to write when one is unhappily so happy as to ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... of this statement and prove our contention that all we see here is really crystallized thought. Our houses, our machinery, our chairs and tables, all that has been made by the hand of man is the embodiment of a thought. As the juices in the soft body of the snail gradually crystallize into the hard and flinty shell which it carries upon its back and which hides it, so everything used in our civilization is a concretion of invisible, intangible mind-stuff. The thought of ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel
... bunk on to the floor and hop on one leg as a specific for the cramp. Then, as he realized his position, he strove madly to rise and straighten the afflicted limb. He was so far successful that he managed to stand, and in the fantastic appearance of a human snail, to shuffle slowly round the kitchen. At first he thought only of the cramp, but after that had yielded to treatment a wild idea of escape occurred to him. Still bowed with the chair, he made his way to the door, and, after ...
— The Skipper's Wooing, and The Brown Man's Servant • W. W. Jacobs
... existence very far had been from him this glorious career, though honors lay in wait for an Endicott who took to statecraft. Shallow Horace, sprung from statesman, had found public life a bore. This feeling had saved him perhaps from the fate of Livingstone, who in his snail-shell could see no other America than a monstrous reproduction ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... at a snail's pace but a few feet above the ground—literally feeling our way along through the darkness, for both moons had set, and the night was black with the clouds that are to be found only ...
— Warlord of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... me, pin in one hand, snail-shell in the other, for a moment in mute astonishment; then, turning more away from me, he went on with his repast, and began insultingly to throw the shells at me over ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn
... concealed in this crucifix had taken too large a toll of American soldiers at that point in the line. The four night raiders left the American trench at one o'clock in the morning. They crawled on their bellies through snow for one hour before reaching the sniper's post. Seven yards per minute is a snail's pace, but pretty good time in No Man's Land, where you must remain motionless each time a star-shell lights up the darkness around you and makes your ...
— The Fight for the Argonne - Personal Experiences of a 'Y' Man • William Benjamin West
... returned home, and that his report had testified to his diligence and progress. At the end of the letter comes this little touch as to some of the schoolboy belongings which had been left behind in Professor Newman's house. "Harry has left divers snail-shells fastened on pasteboard. Perhaps he did not know how to carry ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... was aroused. It did not know how far the Republicans were prepared to go in their drive for action, so on the day of this flurry in the House the snail-like Rules Committee suddenly met in answer to the call of its chairman, Mr. Pou, and by a vote of 6 to 5 decided to report favorably on the resolution providing for a Woman Suffrage Committee in the House "after all pending war measures have been ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... four and twenty strong, Sailors and tailors in a throng; We heard a tale, we saw a sail, And then returned to kill a snail. ...
— Little Folks (November 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... work-boxes grander both in appearance and size; but, nevertheless, whether from habit or from choice, her custom was, in her daily needlework, to use this old friend. Often and often had Charley played with it many wicked pranks. Once, while Katie had as yet no pretension to be grown up, he had put a snail into it, and had incurred her severe displeasure. He had stuffed it full of acorns, and been rewarded by being pelted with them round the lawn; and had filled it with nuts, for which he had not found it so difficult to obtain pardon. He knew every hole and corner ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... Tree Came the Stork, the Duck, and the Owl; The Snail and the Bumblebee, The Frog and the Fimble Fowl (The Fimble Fowl, with a corkscrew leg); And all of them said, "We humbly beg We may build our homes on your lovely Hat,— Mr. Quangle Wangle, grant us that! ...
— Required Poems for Reading and Memorizing - Third and Fourth Grades, Prescribed by State Courses of Study • Anonymous
... in serpentine knots stretched along the flat land, flashing colours livelier than the spring-meadows bordering their line of passage. Guy, with a nod for all, and a greeting for the best-disposed, pushed on toward the van, till the gathering block compelled him to adopt the snail's pace of the advance party, and gave him work enough to keep his two horses from being jammed with the mass. Now and then he cast a weather-eye on the heavens, and was soon confirmed in an opinion he had repeatedly ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... which the male organs are so disposed as not to fecundate the ova of the same body, but require the co-operation of two individuals, notwithstanding the co-existence in each of the organs of both sexes. Each in turn impregnates the other. The common leech, earth-worm, and snail, propagate ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... put in an appearance until this work was done, and then showed a very pale and gloomy countenance. I took no heed of him, however, and with the first streak of daylight we started in single file and at a snail's pace up the valley, the peasant, whom I placed in Maignan's charge, going before to guide us, and M. d'Agen and I riding in the rear. By the time the sun rose and warmed our chilled and shivering frames we were over the worst of the ground, ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... would afford some protection from the bullets of the enemy. Could they reach it? The road swung to the south abruptly, and the horses took it on a sheer run. The noble animals were at their highest speed and doing their utmost, but to Peggy they seemed to move at snail's pace. The yelling, shouting band of ruffians was undoubtedly coming closer. It was amazing with what speed they had borne down upon the sleigh, but they were better horsed. Suddenly the outcries took ...
— Peggy Owen and Liberty • Lucy Foster Madison
... horses like dogs. There is no confusion, however. The eye readily masses into one line all going in the same direction. Each one is hurrying on at the top of his speed, but from this lofty perch they all seem to be crawling at a snail's pace. ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... a change. The passion ebbed out of the face, the paper fluttered out of the loosened fingers, the red-rimmed eyes took on another look. Snail-slow the trembling hand was travelling ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... ahead easy,' was the order now, and as we crept in not a sound was heard but that of the regular beat of the paddle-floats, still dangerously loud in spite of our snail's pace. Suddenly Burroughs gripped ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... more like the wind,' said Wych Hazel. 'I remember one good canter—but all the rest made one think of the snail that went forward three feet ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... famous "Georgetown Loop," crept at a snail's pace—for that is the natural gait of the burro—through the town of Silver Plume, and pursued our leisurely journey toward the beckoning, snow-clad heights beyond. No, we did not hurry, for two reasons: First, our little four-footers would not or could not quicken their pace, urge them as ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... ridden quite fast, or perchance these two had gone at a snail's pace, but when half-way home they looked about them and found that they ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... slow work, Robert," said the older of the boys as they were poling up the river to a new fishing place. "The old boat creeps over the water no faster than a snail." ...
— Fifty Famous People • James Baldwin
... believe we shall ever get enough things before the winter," replied David, with his eyes fixed on the short dry turf at his feet. "Oh, look!" he exclaimed suddenly, "there's a funny snail." ...
— Penelope and the Others - Story of Five Country Children • Amy Walton
... bent, and a blacksmith had to bring clamps and a jackscrew before the new wheel could be adjusted. Even then it had an air of uncertainty that rendered speed impossible. The concluding five miles of the journey were taken at a snail's pace, and Helen reflected ruefully that it was possible to "bruk ze leg" on the level high road as well as on the ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... by his day's work and MARY'S stupidity, from now on absolutely brutish]. You've had time to cook a dozen meals. You're as slow as a snail. What did you do all the time we were ...
— Washington Square Plays - Volume XX, The Drama League Series of Plays • Various
... of all the persons in the world?" they replied, "Not of all in the world, but of all in the kingdom." The sound of their voice was hissing; and they had round faces, which glistened like the shell of a snail, and the pupils of their eyes in a green plane as it were shot forth lightning, which was an effect of the light of phantasy. We stood in the midst of them, and said, "You believe that you possess all the wealth ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... country. I have collected during the last month nothing, but to-day I have been out and returned like Noah's Ark with animals of all sorts. I have to-day to my astonishment found two Planariae living under dry stones: ask L. Jenyns if he has ever heard of this fact. I also found a most curious snail, and spiders, beetles, snakes, scorpions ad libitum, and to conclude shot a Cavia weighing a cwt.—On Friday we sail for the Rio Negro, and then will commence our real wild work. I look forward with dread to the wet stormy regions of the south, but after so much pleasure I must put ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... which a thousand francs over and above its value was paid by M. Godefroy as a result of a sumptuous snail supper given to that gentleman's coachman by the horse-dealer—thanks to the expensive brown bay which certainly went well, the financier was able to get through his many engagements satisfactorily. He appeared punctually at the Bourse, ...
— The Lost Child - 1894 • Francois Edouard Joachim Coppee
... the epithets of an animal trailing with its slime over the herbage, without blood or bones, and carrying its house upon its back, meaning simply a snail."—Coste] ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... noiselessly out, meaning to anticipate his ring. A vague foreboding drove the blood from her lips as she stood waiting at the open hall-door. Seeing the streaming light, the boy managed to accelerate his snail's pace. ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf
... you all the shameful things he has done in all these years. There is never a year goes by without his doing something dreadful; and he has made everybody miserable at one time or other by killing their friends or relations, from the snail to the partridge. He is quite merciless, and spares no one; why, his own children are afraid of him, and it is believed that he has pecked several of them to death, though it is hushed up; but people talk about it all the same, sometimes. As for the way he has behaved to the ladies, if I were ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... Glen assured her. "What's all this business, anyway? Put me wise, Sis, I'm groping like a blind snail in the mulligatawny." ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... each wart with a pebble, and place the pebbles in a bag, which should be lost on the way to church; whoever finds the bag gets the warts." A common Warwickshire custom was to rub the warts with a black snail, stick the snail on a thorn bush, and then, say the folks, as the snail dies ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... agreeable and what is disagreeable. There are definite mathematical laws as to harmony and melody in sound and colour which affect animals and ourselves to a large extent similarly. Sweets are agreeable and bitters are disagreeable, though it is the fact that the snail, which loves sugar, recoils from saccharine, and there are "mites" (Acari) which feed with avidity on bitter strychnine! Excess of heat and of cold is disliked by animals and all men, whilst the ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... clergy and young ladies around. But it was hard that where Rachel really liked and met half-way, the intimate confidence should always be bestowed upon Grace, or even the mother. She had yet to learn that the way to draw out a snail is not to, grasp its horns, and that halfway meeting is not to launch one's self to the opposite starting point. Either her inquiries were too point blank to invite detailed replies, or her own communications absorbed her too much to ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the roof was deeply weather-stained, and, nigh the turfy eaves-trough, all velvet-napped; no doubt the snail-monks founded mossy priories there. The other slope was newly shingled. On the north side, doorless and windowless, the clap-boards, innocent of paint, were yet green as the north side of lichened pines or copperless hulls of Japanese junks, becalmed. The whole base, like those of the neighboring ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... replied. "Not even Cupido can find that out. She'll stay until she gets bored, he says. And to be in less danger of that, she has brought her whole establishment along on her back, like a snail." ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... four-footed transportation possibly obtainable, and started for Fredericksburg to find my regiment. The only directions I had about disposing of this frame of a horse was to "turn the bones loose when you get through with him." He could go only at a snail's pace, and when I reached Fredericksburg it must have been nine o'clock. I crossed the pontoon bridge, which had been laid the morning before under circumstances of the greatest gallantry by Howard's ...
— War from the Inside • Frederick L. (Frederick Lyman) Hitchcock
... latch enters into the catch, and fastens a door." The eyes of the mole are protected by being very small, and buried deep in a cushion of skin, so that the apertures leading to them are like pin-holes in a piece of velvet, scarcely pervious to loose particles of earth. The snail without wings, feet, or thread, adheres to a stalk by a provision of sticking-plaster. The lobster, as he grows, is furnished with a way of uncasing himself of his buckler, and drawing his legs out of his boots when they become too small ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 341, Saturday, November 15, 1828. • Various
... the back under the clothes of the mother, which form a pouch, and from which its tiny head is generally visible over one or the other shoulder, but on being observed by strangers it shrinks like a snail or a marsupian into its snug retreat. When the mother wants to remove it she bends forward, at the same time passing her left hand up the back under her garments, and seizing the child by the feet, pulls it downward to the left; then, passing the right hand under ...
— The First Landing on Wrangel Island - With Some Remarks on the Northern Inhabitants • Irving C. Rosse
... against the steeple rear'd, Became a clock, and still adher'd; And, now, in love to household cares, By a shrill voice the hour declares, Warning the housemaid not to burn The roast-meat which it cannot turn. The easy chair began to crawl, Like a huge snail along the wall; There, stuck aloft in public view, And, with small change, a pulpit grew. A bed-stead of the antique mode, Made up of timber many a load, Such as our ancestors did use, Was metamorphos'd into pews: Which still their ancient nature keep, ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... any day like a rat on a housetop, with only a bundle of musty papers, the tags of broken conversations, and one or two dead, distorted nerves. That is our common risk. But I shall accomplish as much of the road as God permits the snail, and I shall have moulded something; life will have justified itself to me, or I to life. But that is not our ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick
... in line with his Cabinet people, and the others filed by. Richard, being utterly the democrat, was, of course, utterly the aristocrat, since these be extremes that never fail to meet. Wherefore, Richard did not take his place in the procession and waver painfully forward, at a snail's pace, to shake the Presidential hand. It was a foolish ceremony at which Richard's self-respect rebelled. There was no hand, no masculine hand, at least, which Richard would wait in line ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... suppose. Anyhow, I was looking blankly, but rather pleasantly than otherwise, at another window, uncurtained, but by this time black as a slate with the final night-fall. It seemed to me that something like a snail was on the outside of the window-pane. But when I stared harder, it was more like a man's thumb pressed on the pane; it had that curled look that a thumb has. With my fear and courage re-awakened together, I rushed at the window and then recoiled with a strangled scream that any man but Arthur ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... got up my nostrils, choked my ears, and deadened me to everything, save the all-terrorizing, instinctive knowledge, that the figures by my side, were still there, stalking along as quietly and leisurely as if the horse had been going at a snail's pace. ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... Williams the colonel chafed at the incessant delays. "The expedition goes on very much as a snail runs," writes the former to his wife; "it seems we may possibly see Crown Point this time twelve months." The Colonel was vexed because everything was out of joint in the department of transportation: wagoners mutinous for want ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... generous rental, besides offering Alec employment this winter. He's put out because the town hasn't done anything—and now, he says, he and his wife will look after them and Bennington can save its legal snail tracks." ...
— Rainbow Hill • Josephine Lawrence
... dancing had taken place the previous Christmas; and they sat down in the settle together. "There's the cold fireplace, you see," said Clym. "When that half-burnt log and those cinders were alight she was alive! Little has been changed here yet. I can do nothing. My life creeps like a snail." ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... Ottoman kingdom, he avoided their camp, dexterously inclined to the left, occupied Caesarea, traversed the salt desert and the river Halys, and invested Angora; while the Sultan, immovable and ignorant in his post, compared the Tartar swiftness to the crawling of a snail. He returned on the wings of indignation to the relief of Angora; and as both generals were alike impatient for action, the plains round that city were the scene of a memorable battle, which has immortalized the glory of Timur and the shame ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... gulches, and anon through loose shale on ticklishly sloping banks, characterize the passage through the canon. The sun is broiling hot, and my knee swollen and painful. It is barely possible to crawl along at a snail's pace by keeping my game leg stiff; bending the knee is attended with agony. Frequent rests are necessary, and an examination ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... lost, death would not frighten us at all. Dying is simple enough, and indeed easy, for most of us. But I expect that something very precise and definite happens to us, the moment we die. It is probable, I think, that we shall set about building up a new body to inhabit at once, as a snail builds its shell. We are very definite creatures, all of us, with clearly apportioned tastes and energies, preferences and dislikes. The only puzzling thing is that we do not all of us seem to have the bodies which suit us here on earth: fiery ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... this same hero of his was the one human being, himself barely excepted, for whose life his sister cared. He charged her of never having forgiven Hilary for making Anna godmother of their flag, and of being in some dark league against him—"hell only knew what"—along with that snail of a cousin whom everybody but Kincaid himself and the silly old uncle knew to be the fallen man's most venomous foe. Throughout the storm the grandmother's fingers pattered soothing caresses, while Flora stood as unruffled by his true surmises as by any, a look of cold interest in ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... Snails form the basis, or rather the chief ingredient, of many of these medicines. Indeed, I should fancy that snails must have been almost exterminated in the near vicinity of towns, so largely were they sought for and employed medicinally. There are several receipts for making snail-water, or snail-pottage; here is one of the most ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... calculate whether he might get over to France without paying them, and be able to carry his share of the property with him; and so he went on, pursuing his wretched, uneasy, solitary ride, sometimes sauntering along at a snail's pace, and then again spurring the poor brute, and endeavouring to bring his mind to some settled plan. But, whenever he did so, the idea of his sister's death was the only one which seemed to present either comfort ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... longer the traveller goes at a snail's pace through the deep sand over the heath; the railroad conveys him in a few hours to Altona and Hamburg. The circle of my friends there is increased within the last years. The greater part of my time I spent with my oldest friends Count Hoik, and the resident ...
— The True Story of My Life • Hans Christian Andersen
... so strive, as to have God's approbation. What, do you think that every heavy-heeled professor will have heaven? What, every lazy one? every wanton and foolish professor, that will be stopt by anything, kept back by anything, that scarce runneth so fast heavenward as a snail creepeth on the ground? Nay, there are some professors that do not go on so fast in the way of God as a snail doth go on the wall; and yet these think that heaven and happiness is for them. But stay, there are many more that run than there ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Vol. 2 (of 10) • Grenville Kleiser
... insensibility of a horse who does not lash his tail when the whip cuts him!... How many times I have been happy and hopeful, and have made enemies and humbled myself for nothing! How many times I have taken flight like an eagle—and returned crawling like a snail whose shell has been crushed!... Where have I not been! What roads have I not travelled!... And the roads are often dirty,' added Rudin, slightly turning away. 'You know ...' he was continuing.... 'Listen,' interrupted Lezhnyov. 'We used once to say "Dmitri and Mihail" to one another. ...
— Rudin • Ivan Turgenev
... dreamest already that our men-at-arms are in thy refectory and thy ale-vaults. But do me one cast of thy holy office, and, come what list of others, thou shalt sleep as safe in thy cell as a snail ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... a wonderful, but at the same time, we think, a universal and important fact, that love permeates the universe. Even a female snail, if we could only put the question, would undoubtedly admit that ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne
... flower garden in front of the house. The garden was Dobbin's pride; and the pride of the garden was a moss-rose tree, which was the peculiar treasure of the labourer's little crippled son, who watched it from the window, and whenever he was well enough, crept out to water it, and pick off any stray snail which had ventured to climb up its rich brown leaves. No mother ever watched her little infant with more eager eyes than Jacob Dobbin did his favourite rose; and no doubt he thought all the more of it because ...
— The One Moss-Rose • P. B. Power
... with fir trees. Apart from its mining aspect, Mons is a city of historic importance. It contains a Gothic cathedral and town hall of medieval architectural note. It also, cherishes a special yearly fete of its own on Trinity Sunday, when in the parade of the Limacon, or snail, the spectacle of St. George and the Dragon is presented. With great pride the citizens of Mons showed the British soldiers of occupation an ancient cannon, claimed to have been used by their forefathers as an ally of the ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of 12) - The War Begins, Invasion of Belgium, Battle of the Marne • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... I didn't have no sech idee as askin' you to go, even if you did know who was the best man for the job. The snail thinks he's travelled a long ways when he goes a foot, an' some ...
— The Further Adventures of Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks • Charles Felton Pidgin
... shock to her. She paddled along shore quite near them for a while, trying to be resigned to it. And then she waddled out on the grassy bank, and fed them with some newts, and a tadpole, and a few blue-bottle flies, and a snail, and several other delicacies, which they seemed to enjoy quite as much as if they had been young ducks. And then Quackalina, seeing them quite happy, struck out for the very middle of the pond. She would have one glorious outing, at least. Oh, how sweet ...
— Solomon Crow's Christmas Pockets and Other Tales • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... it does so, as do certainly the people of the coast near which it is found. He told me that possibly this idea had arisen because the shell, when empty, swims on the surface. The creature, when at the bottom, crawls along like any other snail. Sometimes it dies and falls out, when the shell rises to the surface by means of the gases generated in its chambers; and thus they are seen floating on the waves. Others say, however, that the animal itself with the shell, putting out its head and all its tentacles, spreads ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... their doctrine of the real presence, and which our Scottish Episcopalians have so recently adopted as the characteristic vignette of their service-book. The toad and the newt had crept over it, and it had borrowed a new tint of brilliancy from the slime of the snail. Destruction had run riot along the walls of this parish church. There were carvings chipped and mutilated, as if in sport, less apparently with the intention of defacing, than rendering them contemptible and grotesque. A huge cross of ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... railway line from Catania to Messina, which crossed it on a long bridge supported by stone pillars and buttresses, the bridge which, as Gaspare had said, had recently collapsed and was now nearly built up again. It was already in use, but the trains were obliged to crawl over it at a snail's pace in order not to shake the unfinished masonry, and men were stationed at each end to signal to the driver whether he was to stop or whether he might venture to go on. Beyond the watercourse, upon the side opposite to the town of San Felice, was a series of dense ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... shelly house for themselves; they do this to defend their soft bodies from the attacks of a host of enemies. Some build two shells—the Oyster and Mussel do, as you know. These are called bi-valves; that is, two valves or shells; and others, like the Garden Snail, the Limpet, and Periwinkle, have one shell only, ...
— On the Seashore • R. Cadwallader Smith
... time. Their love of finery and gaudy colours is also most remarkable. Interwoven amongst the twigs of which the bower is composed, and scattered about the ground in its vicinity, are found bleached bones, broken oyster, snail, and cowrie shells, and not unfrequently, in the more civilised districts, pieces of coloured rag, and fragments of ribbon pilfered from some neighbouring station, for, in search of attractive objects to decorate his playground, the bower-bird entirely ignores the eighth commandment, and, I ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden
... a great snail, clinging to one of its horns, and nearly breaking his poor little back in his efforts to drag it over a blade ...
— Sylvie and Bruno • Lewis Carroll
... one with the other, they had insensibly relaxed their pace, becoming mere strollers on the outside edge of the throng. The sense of being watched came to both of them at once, and, looking up at the same moment, they saw, approaching at a snail's pace, an open Victoria, in which were two ladies, to whom they were objects of plainly expressed interest. The elder was an insignificant little woman, who looked as though she were being taken out by her costly furs, ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... little sister to lavish it upon that Sarah. This was so unnatural that you may believe it first disgusted, and then irritated me. One day at the club I could not resist saying, 'You are an ass, La Bride, to ruin yourself—worse than that, to ruin your sister, for the sake of a snail, as little sympathetic as Sarah, a girl who always has a cold in her head, and who has already deceived you.' 'Deceived me!' cried La Brede, waving his long arms. 'Deceived me! and with whom?'—'With me.' As he knew I never ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet
... island was regulated and assisted by this process. Oyster-shells were first introduced; muscle-shells speedily followed; and, as commerce became more complicate, they had even been obliged to have recourse to snail-shells. Popanilla retired to rest with admiration of the people who thus converted to the most useful purposes things apparently so useless. There was no saying now what might not be done even with a nutshell. ...
— The Voyage of Captain Popanilla • Benjamin Disraeli
... this letter by the packet of the 24th inst., and am in hopes of sending with it some intelligence from those from whom I have been so long expecting something. Everything moves at a snail's pace here. I find delay in all things; at least, so it appears to me, who have too strong a development of the American organ of 'go-ahead-ativeness' to feel easy under its tantalizing effects. A Frenchman ought to have as many lives as a cat to bring to pass, ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... bank, which is standing very nearly still, and you will realise that you and your canoe are standing very nearly still too; and that all your exertions are only enabling you to creep on at the pace of a crushed snail, and that it's the water that is going the pace. It's a most ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... and also by having recourse to lime, in the preparation of the land for such crops. They conceal themselves in the holes and crevices, only making their appearance early in mornings and late in the evenings. The white slug or snail is likewise very destructive to young turnip crops, by rising out of the holes of the soils, on wet and dewy mornings and evenings. Rolling the ground with a heavy implement, before the sun rises, has been advised as a means of destroying them in these cases. Slugs of this sort are likewise ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... door-posts snapped, the other sloped inwards, the roof collapsed, the sides went in, the ice passed over all, and the hut of Peegwish was finally obliterated from off the face of the earth. So, a giant with his foot might slowly and effectually crush the mansion of a snail! ...
— The Red Man's Revenge - A Tale of The Red River Flood • R.M. Ballantyne
... Lankester writes to me) was the first to systematically conduct the study of Zoology and Comparative Anatomy in this country by making use of a carefully selected series of animals. His 'types' were the Rat, the Common Pigeon, the Frog, the Perch, the Crayfish, Blackbeetle, Anodon, Snail, Earthworm, Leech, Tapeworm. He had a series of dissections of these mounted, also loose dissections and elaborate manuscript descriptions. The student went through this series, dissecting fresh specimens for himself. After some ten years' experience ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... babe and cared for you; but the parish allowance was stopped when you was fourteen. It shan't be said of us that bare we took you in and bare we turn you out. But marry you must. It's ordained o' nature. There's the difference atwixt a slug and a snail. The snail's got her own house to go into. A slug hasn't. When she's uncomfortable she ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould |
