"Tortoise" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... inconvenience results to them from this negligence? Children are heavier, indeed; but in proportion they are weaker. They can scarcely move themselves at all; how can they lame themselves? If laid upon the back they would die in that position, like the tortoise, without being able ever ...
— Emile - or, Concerning Education; Extracts • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... truth, think a great deal of that old tortoise-shell harlot; but I haven't a doubt that in order to impress Susy I was pretending agonies of solicitude which I didn't honestly feel. Sour Mash never gave me any real anxiety; she was always able to take care of herself, and she was ostentatiously ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... certain occasion when a member of the club spoke of newspapers as likely to supersede the pulpit, Mrs. Howe replied to him: "God forbid that should happen. God forbid we should do without the pulpit. It is the old fable of the hare and the tortoise. We need the hare for light running, but the slow, steady tortoise wins the goal at last." Religious subjects, however, were not so much discussed at the Radical Club as philosophy and politics,—and in these Mrs. Howe felt herself very ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... too far and too fast than not go at all," retorted my wise mother. "Once a tortoise beat a hare,—once. It never happened again, yet the whole timid world has been talking about it ever since." And she fell into a study from which she roused herself to say, "You'd better let me bargain for the office and the furniture,—and the ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips
... time of his coming, for it happened at the end of five days and nights during which the year passed from strength to age; in the interval between the swallow's departure and the redwing's coming; when the tortoise in my garden crept into his winter quarters, and the equinox was on us, with an east wind that parched the blood in the trees, so that their leaves for once knew no gradations of red and yellow, but turned at a stroke to brown, ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... few of the neighborhood children were invited to the shaded interior of the old surrey. Her dolls—all five of them—spent a good deal of time there and David, the tortoise-shell cat, came often, usually under compulsion. When David had kittens, which interesting domestic event took place pretty frequently, he—or she—positively refused to be an occupant of that surrey, growling and scratching ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln
... reality. What men call motion is only a name given to a series of conditions, each of which, considered separately, is rest. "Rest is force resistant; motion is force triumphant."[457] The famous puzzle of "Achilles and the Tortoise," by which he endeavored to prove the unreality of motion, has been rendered ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... verbally inspired, but all its authors, copyists, editors, and pious readers were also infallibly inspired. As in the old Hindoo account of how the world was supported, the earth was said to be held up on pillars, and the pillars on an elephant, and the elephant on a tortoise, and when the defender of the faith was asked what, then, did the tortoise rest on, he sought to save himself in his quandary, by roundly asserting that "it was tortoise all the way down";—so the defender of the infallibility of the Scripture has to take refuge ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... were slender bamboos, about twelve feet long, with lines of the same length made of twisted banana fibre as fine as silk, and equally as strong. My hook was an ordinary flatted Kirby, about half the size of an English whiting hook; Nalik preferred one of his own manufacture, made from a strip of tortoise-shell, barbless and ...
— "Martin Of Nitendi"; and The River Of Dreams - 1901 • Louis Becke
... the old masters. Amongst them is a drawing in sepia for Tintoretto's masterpiece, the Miracle of St. Mark at Venice. In a room kept locked, but which the custode will open on application, are some interesting cabinets (one designed, it is said, by B.Cellini, another of amber, athird of tortoise-shell); also bronzes, carving in wood and ivory, majolica, enamels, etc. Amongst other curiosities is a "Presepio," with numerous figures in coral, the metal ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... thrust his hand into the breast of his blue cotton shirt, and pulled out a sort of instrument made from the shell of a tortoise, with three or four strings stretched across, and in a low, monotonous tone, something between a chant and a whine, not altogether unmusical, he commenced his story. But first he struck his instrument, and ran over a short prelude, which may be imagined by a series ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... that perfect fit and finish which makes the simplest dress seem all that can be desired. There was a knowing look to each little detail, from the slender silver bangles which appeared beneath the loose wrinkled wrists of their very long gloves to the tortoise-shell pins with which their hats were fastened to the tightly braided hair coiled low down on the nape of the neck. Candace's hair fell in curls to her waist. She had always worn it so, and no one had ever thought anything about it; but now, all in a moment, ...
— A Little Country Girl • Susan Coolidge
... creeping stealthily out of the cave in which he was born, in order to steal some oxen belonging to his brother Apollo, who was at this time feeding the flocks of Admetus. But he had not proceeded very far on his expedition before he found a tortoise, which he killed, and, stretching seven strings across the empty shell, invented a lyre, upon which he at once began to play with exquisite skill. When he had sufficiently amused himself with the ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... were little,' the Mock Turtle went on at last, more calmly, though still sobbing a little now and then, 'we went to school in the sea. The master was an old Turtle—we used to call him Tortoise—' ...
— Alice's Adventures in Wonderland • Lewis Carroll
... fastened and it fell away at the waist displaying her green striped apron. From beneath the long dress, her feet were visible encased in men's black shoes laced with white strings. Her ornaments consisted of a ring on her third finger, earrings, and tortoise-rimmed glasses which plainly displayed ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume IV, Georgia Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... beautiful corals, shells, seaweeds, and fossils; all the ancient native weapons, such as bows, arrows, swords, and spears—now, alas! no longer procurable—sling-stones, and stones used in games, back-scratchers, hair-ornaments made of sharks' teeth, tortoise-shell cups and spoons, calabashes and bowls. There were some most interesting though somewhat horrible necklaces made of hundreds of braids of human hair cut from the heads of victims slain by the chiefs themselves; from these braids was ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... brief narrative of the birth of Hermes, the author goes on to show how he won a place among the gods. First the new-born child found a tortoise and from its shell contrived the lyre; next, with much cunning circumstance, he stole Apollo's cattle and, when charged with the theft by Apollo, forced that god to appear in undignified guise before the tribunal of Zeus. Zeus seeks ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... islands, traveling for nine months, and then returned to pay religiously even for the merchandise that the Chinamen did not remember to have given them. The products which they in exchange exported from the islands were crude wax, cotton, pearls, tortoise-shell, betel-nuts, dry-goods, etc. [5] ...
— The Indolence of the Filipino • Jose Rizal
... debilitated by age or disease from procuring it for themselves. At my visit, the hospital contained horses, mules, oxen, sheep, goats, monkeys, poultry, pigeons, and a variety of birds, with an aged tortoise, who was known to have been there for seventy-five years. The most extraordinary ward was that appropriated to rats, mice, bugs, and other noxious vermin. The overseers of the hospital frequently hire beggars from the streets, for a stipulated sum, to pass a night ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 10, No. 271, Saturday, September 1, 1827. • Various
... He sold that negro for two thousand dollars, and then put him for ever out of the reach of all pursuers; and they can never graze him unless they can find the negro; and that they cannot do, for his carcass has fed many a tortoise and cat-fish before this time, and the frogs have sung this many a long day to the silent repose of ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... bar, full to overflowing with honest British yeomen—many of them in a similar condition—that Baxter sought. His goal was the genteel dining-room on the first floor, where a bald and shuffling waiter, own cousin to a tortoise, served luncheon to those desiring it. Lack of sleep had reduced Baxter to a condition where the presence and chatter of the house party were insupportable. It was his purpose to lunch at the Emsworth Arms and take a nap in ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... then it rained, then snowed again, seeming as if the weather was determined on some kind of storm, but had not yet made up its mind for snow, rain, or hail. Now the wind roared in the chimney, and started out of her sleep a great tortoise-shell cat, that lay on the rug which Aunt Kindly had made for her. Tabby opened her yellow eyes suddenly, and erected her smellers, but finding it was only the wind and not a mouse that made the noise, she stretched out ...
— Two Christmas Celebrations • Theodore Parker
... sublime He stood, Still'd with his waving arm the babbling flood; "To Man's dull ear," He cry'd, "I call in vain, "Hear me, ye scaly tenants of the main!"— 250 Misshapen Seals approach in circling flocks, In dusky mail the Tortoise climbs the rocks, Torpedoes, Sharks, Rays, Porpus, Dolphins, pour Their twinkling squadrons round the glittering shore; 255 With tangled fins, behind, huge Phocae glide, And Whales and Grampi swell the distant tide. Then kneel'd the hoary Seer, to ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... her. The 18th, she slept at Pau, the native place of Henry IV. The mountaineers, descending from their heights, banner in hand, with their Basque costumes, came to meet her. The next day she visited the castle where was born the Bearnais, whose cradle, formed of a great tortoise-shell, she saw: it was shaded by draperies and white plumes. The following day she visited the environs. To descend into the valley of Ossun, she donned the felt hat and the red sash worn by the peasants of Bearn. As she was looking at the spring of Nays, a mountaineer offered her some water in ...
— The Duchess of Berry and the Court of Charles X • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... of the challenge seemed to strike our host. He shot his head out of the mist with a queer tortoise-like motion he sometimes had, ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... pink little thing, laid down the pen he had snatched up as I entered the room, and began gazing at me quizzically through enormous tortoise-shell-rimmed goggles, after the fashion of a precocious infant who tries to look like daddy. What might he do ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... Brand-sands, the Vulture, Captain Nabob; the Tortoise snow, from Lapland; the Pet-en-l'air, from Versailles; the Dreadnought, from Mount Etna, Sir W. Hamilton, commander; the Tympany, Montgolfier; and the Mine-A-in-a-bandbox, from the Cape of Good Hope. Foundered in a hurricane, the Bird of Paradise, from Mount Ararat. The Bubble, Sheldon, ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... tired with my day's work, I was lying on the couch with a book in my hand, when gazing upwards I saw a large mass of something overhead which I had not noticed before. Looking more carefully I could see yellow and black marks, and thought it must be a tortoise-shell put up there out of the way between the ridge-pole and the roof Continuing to gaze, it suddenly resolved itself into a large snake, compactly coiled up in a kind of knot; and I could detect his head and his bright ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... means to have his house painted. I painted "Jerome" in oils with care and gave it to Rodrigo of Portugal, who gave Susanna a ducat for a tip. Have changed a Philip's florin for expenses and gave 10 stivers to my Father Confessor. Gave 4 stivers for the little tortoise. I have dined with Herr Gilbert, who gave me a Calicut target made of a fish skin, and two gloves as they use them for fighting. I have given Peter 2 stivers. Gave 10 stivers for the fish fins, and 3 stivers for a tip. I have made ...
— Memoirs of Journeys to Venice and the Low Countries - [This is our volunteer's translation of the title] • Albrecht Durer
... men in the tail of the line, who are running rapidly. It is a curious but quite inexplicable fact that if you set a hundred men to march in single file in the dark, though the leading man may be crawling like a tortoise, the last man is compelled to proceed at a profane double if he is to avoid being left behind ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... passed like a tortoise, and we came to the Lucayas, to the outposts of the vast hunting ground of Spaniard and pirate and buccaneer, the fringe of that zone of beauty and villainy and fear, and sailed slowly past the islands, looking for ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... inventory we read of a valuable present made by David Rizzio to Mary, a tortoise of rubies, which she kept till her death, for it appears in a list made after her execution at Fotheringay. The murdered David Rizzio left a brother Joseph. Him the queen made her secretary, and in her will ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang
... earth when submerged under the ocean, Narasimha the Man-lion who destroyed the tyrant Hiranya-kasipu, the Dwarf who overthrew Bali, Rama Bhargava who destroyed the Kshatriyas, Rama Dasarathi, of whom we shall have something to say later. Krishna Vasudeva the slayer of Kamsa of Mathura, the Tortoise, the Fish, and Kalki. Then follow some further details, among them a statement that this doctrine was revealed to Arjuna at the beginning of the Great War—a clear reference to the Bhagavad-gita—that at the beginning of every age it was promulgated by Narayana, that it requires activity ...
— Hindu Gods And Heroes - Studies in the History of the Religion of India • Lionel D. Barnett
... in conclusion of this too prolix discussion about myself, that while making my tortoise-like progress, I saw what I had fondly looked upon as my own ground, (having indeed lain unmolested by any other invader for so many ages,) suddenly entered, and in part occupied, by one of my countrymen. I allude to Mr. Irving's "History of Columbus," and "Chronicle ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... ludicrous resemblance between his countenance and expression and that of one of the tortoises in the illustrations of one of Agassiz's works on natural history. To which my friend replied: "It is the tortoise on which the elephant stands that bears up the foundations of the world," ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... seen little Kittens before—Kittens that belonged to other Cats—but she was certain that none of them had looked at all like her three charming babies. She could not decide which one of them was the most beautiful. She was a Tortoise-shell Cat herself, and her fur was spotted with white, black, and yellow. The babies had the same colors on their soft coats, but not in just the same ...
— Among the Farmyard People • Clara Dillingham Pierson
... her dinner frock, she put on a white silk gown which turned her into a pale spirit flitting hither and thither in the silver dusk. Still Knight had not come. She pulled out the four great tortoise-shell pins which held up her hair, and let it tumble over her shoulders. As she began to twist it into one heavy plait, she walked to the ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... major filled in the pause, "that you are a trifle short on a woman's long suit—patience. Now in the case of David Kildare, you don't want to give him one moment of tortoise speed but must keep him pacing with the hare entirely. Remember the result ...
— Andrew the Glad • Maria Thompson Daviess
... investigated by Captain Cantley* and Dr. Falconer, and the Cordilleras, whose elevations are probably, of very different epochs, contain, besides numerous mastodons, the sivatherium, and the gigantic land tortoise of the primitive world ('Colossochelys'), which is twelve feet in length and six in height, and several extant families, as elephants, rhinoceroses, and giraffes; and it is a remarkable fact, that these remains are found in a zone which still enjoys the ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... three Avataras apart from the remainder, for a reason that you will readily understand as we go through them. We take the Avatara which is spoken of as that of Matsya or the fish; that which is spoken of as that of Kurma or the tortoise; that which is spoken of as that of Varaha, or the boar. Three animal forms; how strange! thinks the modern graduate. How strange that the Supreme should take the forms of these lower animals, a fish, a tortoise, a boar! What childish folly! "The babbling of a race in its infancy," it is said ...
— Avataras • Annie Besant
... shutters were not shut at this house, although each of the blinds was drawn exactly a quarter of the way down. Jimmy saw a large tortoise-shell cat lying on one of the window sills, whilst a black cat watched it ...
— The Little Clown • Thomas Cobb
... philosophers have but expanded these so-called arguments, often they have pushed them to trifling and indecency. They have found God in the folds of the skin of the rhinoceros: one could, with equal reason, deny His existence because of the tortoise's shell. ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... and they kept a day-school, and taught Sophy to read, write, and cipher. They lived near London, in a lane opening on a great common, with a green rail before the house, and had a good many pupils, and kept a tortoise shell cat and a canary. Not much to enlighten her ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... consideration entertained by the mind which induces us to act, this tells us nothing. It is like the case of the Indian philosopher(23), who, being asked what it was that kept the earth in its place, answered, that it was supported by an elephant, and that elephant again rested on a tortoise. He must be endowed with a slender portion of curiosity, who, being told that uneasiness is that which spurs on the mind to act, shall rest satisfied with this explanation, and does not proceed to ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... intense cold, the blinding snow and driving sleet, the want sometimes of provisions, sometimes of water, the use of poisonous herbs, and the harassing attacks of the enemy's cavalry and bowmen, which could only be repelled by maintaining the dense array of the phalanx or the tortoise, reduced the retreating army by one-third of its numbers. At length, after a march of 300 Roman, or 277 British, miles, they reached the river Araxes, probably at the Julfa ferry, and, crossing it, found themselves in Armenia. But the calamities of the return were not yet ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 6. (of 7): Parthia • George Rawlinson
... not fear," he answered. "None will enter here but by my goodwill, and I will bar the garden door lest any idle lad should pry in; but they come not here. The tortoise who crawls about in the summer fills them with too much terror for them to venture, and is better than any watch-dog. Now, let me touch your pulse. Ah! I would prescribe lying down on the bed and resting ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the hare, Tom, Set out at each his pace; The hare it was the fleeter, The tortoise won the race; And since the world's beginning This ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... here mention that several days later I became aware that this same broth—the origin of which puzzled me at the moment, though not enough to prevent me from taking it—had been prepared from a kind of tortoise, the existence of which in large numbers on the spit Hutchinson had accidentally discovered that very morning, and in pursuit of which he had sent out two of the most slightly wounded with a sack, and instructions to catch and ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... branch from the same limb. Finally the evolution of turtles from the same ancestors is intelligible if we begin with a short stout animal like the so-called "horned toad" of Arizona, and proceed to the soft-shelled tortoise of the Mississippi River system; the establishment of a bony armor completes the evolution of the familiar ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton
... of Gibraltar. A spacious swelling spread of live water it is, and safe, except, as one of my fellow-passengers informed me, for a rock off the Punta del Carnero, or Mutton Point. The rock is covered when the tide is high (for there is a tide here), but rears its tortoise-like back over the surface for some hours at the ebb. The Channel squadron was coming out of Gib some years before when an ironclad grounded on this rock, but was got off without more damage than a scraping. As the danger ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... The tortoise in the right road will beat a racer in the wrong. It matters not though a youth be slow, if he be but diligent. Quickness of parts may even prove a defect, inasmuch as the boy who learns readily will often ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... especially as my friend Padlock had asked me if I wouldn't like to go up to Saratogy—that I'd go, and I went. It was odd enough, to be sure," said Uncle Joe, taking a pinch of rappee from his tortoise-shell box—"very odd, in fact, but somehow or other, Mrs. Padlock, being in poor health, and her sister, a rather volatile and inexperienced young ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... herself on a pile of timber and, motioning the young man to join her, experienced a sudden thrill as she saw the head of Mr. Walters protruding tortoise-like over the side of the Indian Chief, which lay a little way below them. Fearful that Mr. Filer should see it, she directed his attention to two small boys who were disporting themselves in a ship's boat, and, with her ...
— Salthaven • W. W. Jacobs
... very happy to translate, were my pen capable of rendering into English the robust thundering sentences of his powerful Castilian. I had till then considered him a plain uninformed old man, almost simple, and as incapable of much emotion as a tortoise within its shell; but he had become at once inspired: his eyes were replete with a bright fire, and every muscle of his face was quivering. The little silk skull-cap which he wore, according to the custom of the Catholic clergy, moved up and down with his agitation, and I soon saw that I was in ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... bright creton and muslin, and the dull-green carpet neither stared one out of countenance nor made one fearful to set foot upon it. It was a jolly, chummy sort of carpet that seemed to say, "Walk on me all you want to, and don't be afraid to spill your crumbs; I like crumbs." A very large tortoise-shell cat lay stretched along the arm of the couch, half asleep, and purred as Eve dipped her fingers in the long fur. The windows on the side of the room were open and the draperies swayed gently with the little breeze. Wade, seated at the other ...
— The Lilac Girl • Ralph Henry Barbour
... also with the same letters D. H. in the inside, which likewise had belonged to her said former husband, as also wore silver knee-buckles, and had two dozen silver buttons upon a double-breasted vest, made of stript lutstring: That he frequently had about him a folding penknife, that had a brown tortoise-shell handle, and a plate upon the end of it, on which was cut a naked boy, or some such device, with which he often sealed his letters: That one day when he was dressing some hooks while the deponent was by, she observed that he was cutting his hat with his penknife, and she ...
— Trial of Duncan Terig, alias Clerk, and Alexander Bane Macdonald • Sir Walter Scott
... come out, and then boil them, and drink up the liquor, and then beat the great ends of them in a mortar, and so eat them. They would eat horse's guts, and ears, and all sorts of wild birds which they could catch; also bear, venison, beaver, tortoise, frogs, squirrels, dogs, skunks, rattlesnakes; yea, the very bark of trees; besides all sorts of creatures, and provision which they plundered from the English. I can but stand in admiration to see the wonderful power of God in providing ...
— Captivity and Restoration • Mrs. Mary Rowlandson
... obtain their food in an infinite number of ways; and that their varied habits and instincts are in every case adapted to the conditions of their existence. The porcupine and the hedgehog have a defensive armour that saves them from the attacks of most animals. The tortoise is not injured by the conspicuous colours of his shell, because that shell is in most cases an effectual protection to him. The skunks of North America find safety in their power of emitting an unbearably offensive odour; the beaver in its aquatic habits and solidly constructed abode. In some ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... the complexion; the scissars, needles, pen-knives, and other little appendages, were then unknown; and rude and ill-polished skewers usurped the place of pins. In China, the ladies had their needlework, their paint-boxes, their trinkets of ivory, of silver in fillagree, of mother-pearl, and of tortoise-shell. Even the calendar, at this time so defective in Europe, that Pope Gregory was urged to the bold undertaking of leaping over, or annihilating, ten days, was found to be, in China, a national concern, and ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... which are in danger of being wrecked. Several of these fish they caught, using large hooks fastened to chains, and sometimes baited merely with a piece of colored cloth. From the maw of one they took out a living tortoise; from that of another the head of a shark, recently thrown from one of the ships; such is the indiscriminate voracity of these terrors of the ocean. Notwithstanding their superstitious fancies, the seamen ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... looks out on it from his offices in the Hotel Cecil, Londoners have to look to him to see if he or Pierpont Morgan will not open it to them again. What a pleasant alternative from the asphyxiating Underground or the tortoise-moving omnibus would not a fast, comfortably fitted line of river steamers be! It seems inconceivable that, with such a waterway and such primitive and inadequate alternative means of travel, the people should ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch
... the savage forces of nature and of nature's jungle. Why, even the tiny balu of the tribe of Go-lat, the great ape, was better fitted to survive than these, for a balu could at least escape the numerous creatures that menaced its existence, while with the possible exception of Kota, the tortoise, none moved so slowly as did helpless ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... beautiful curls nicely smoothed, her graceful merino dress and delicate collar all trim and spotless, her gay little work-bag in her hand. She lingered to exchange a few kindly words with Sarah, and to look at the new tortoise-shell kitten basking on the kitchen hearth, and to speak to the canary-bird, which a sudden blaze from the fire had startled on its perch; and then she betook herself ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... full of shells. Across one end of the little room ran a glazed counter, where lay heaped together various objects of jewelry, shell necklaces, alligator teeth and sea-beans set in various ways, tortoise-shell combs, bracelets and hairpins,—a dazzling array. Yet the boy's eyes passed almost carelessly over these treasures, to light with quick enchantment on the shells themselves, the real shells, as he instantly named them to himself, resenting half-consciously ...
— Nautilus • Laura E. Richards
... older than mother, whose appearance struck me by contrast. Perhaps it was the first time I observed her dress; her face I must have studied before, for I knew all her moods by it. Her long, lusterless, brown hair was twisted around a high-topped tortoise-shell comb; it was so heavy and so carelessly twisted that the comb started backward, threatening to fall out. She had minute rings of filigreed gold in her ears. Her dress was a gray pongee, simply made and short; I could see her round-toed morocco ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... leave off at once!" screamed Fraulein Rottenmeier. But her voice was drowned by the music. She was making a dash for the boy, when she saw something on the ground crawling towards her feet—a dreadful dark object—a tortoise. At this sight she jumped higher than she had for many long years before, shrieking with all her ...
— Heidi • Johanna Spyri
... bond can connect the flower which a girl wears in her hair and the blood which courses through her youthful veins; or, what is there in common between the dense and resisting mass of the oak, or the strong fabric of the tortoise, and those broad disks of glassy jelly which may be seen pulsating through the waters of a calm sea, but which drain away to mere films in the hand which raises ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... with the two wings. This court was paved from one side to the other with marble flags of different shades, excepting in the middle, where played the fountain—a circular basin of water, upon a rock, in the centre of which two bronze satyrs struggled for a tortoise, from whose mouth the supplying stream poured forth. From the end of each wing of the palace the line of the sides was continued by a straight stone wall of considerable height, leading across the whole breadth of the Caelian Hill to the ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... round world rested on thy spacious nape; Upon thy neck, like a mere mole, it stood: O thou that took'st for us the Tortoise-shape, Hail, Keshav, hail! ...
— Indian Poetry • Edwin Arnold
... he replied, "has three hundred and sixty-five days, or eight thousand seven hundred and sixty hours. In so many hours great things may be done; the slow tortoise makes a long journey by losing ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... periods in the history of the war—the first great De Wet hunt. It is beside the purport of this volume to discuss the advantages of British infantry pursuing mounted Boers. It has often been maintained that the result of such an apparently hopeless hare-and-tortoise sort of procedure would have been successful on this occasion but for the fact of the unblocking of Olifant's Nek. On the other hand, there are not wanting many who are equally prepared to argue that, although this bolt-hole being open may have facilitated the guerilla's escape, that astute ...
— The Second Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers in the South African War - With a Description of the Operations in the Aden Hinterland • Cecil Francis Romer and Arthur Edward Mainwaring
... lodge-keeper, sat rocking her baby in the old porch seat; through the open door one could catch glimpses of the bright red-tiled kitchen with its wooden settle and the tortoise-shell cat asleep on the great wicker chair; beyond, the sunny little herb-garden with its plots of lavender, marjoram, and sweet-smelling thyme, the last monthly roses blooming among the gooseberry bushes; a child cliqueting up the narrow brick path with ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... heart of all creatures, "chaffinch and siskin, skylark and goldfinch, tiny choristers" piping and trilling, "elaborating their motets" to the glory of Him who gave them voice and wings on the fifth day of Genesis. He fraternizes with all, with his dogs and his cats, his tame tortoise, and even the "slimy and swollen frog"; the "Philosopher" of the Harmas, whose murky eyes he loves to interrogate as he paces his garden "by the light of the stars"; persuaded that all are accomplishing a useful work, and that all creatures, from the humblest insect which has only nibbled a leaf, ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... joy declared; The fair round face, the snowy beard, The velvet of her paws, Her coat, that with the tortoise vies, Her ears of jet, and emerald eyes, She saw; ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... combs as parts of the adornment of the women whom he knew. There in the mountains young girls did not wear them, save of the "circular" variety, designed to hold back "shingled" tresses. But from underneath a box of faded gum-drops and the store's one carton of cigars, came some of imitation tortoise-shell, gilt ornamented, of the sort old ladies sometimes stuck into their hirsute knots for mountain "doings" of great elegance, and the best of these Madge bought. Also she bought lace—great quantities of it, although, ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... redness; even the row of bullets on the rude shelf near the window will give a dull gleam, whilst our old acquaintance, the axe, will wink as if a dozen eyes were strewn along its sharp, bright edge. And then the brown and tortoise-shell cat belonging to the "old woman" will partake of the lustre; and the old woman herself—a little, active, bustling body, will be seated in one corner of the fire-place, after having swept clean the hearth; and "Sport" ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... or over the breasts, while anklets, such as are used by the women of the other tribes, are frequently seen. Both sexes are fond of bracelets of brass, shell, or vines, as well as of finger rings of tortoise ...
— The Wild Tribes of Davao District, Mindanao - The R. F. Cummings Philippine Expedition • Fay-Cooper Cole
... about this third, or in fact, this fourth Nile? These animals, covered with scales as hard as the tortoise-shell the Spaniards under Columbus found in that river, and which, as we have said, caused them to name that stream Los Lagartos, are certainly crocodiles. Shall we declare that these Niles rise in the Mountains of the ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... supposed no longer to exist when pushed a step further off, as the difficulty of conceiving the world upheld by an elephant was supposed to be got rid of when it was said that the elephant was supported by a tortoise. ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... was a big paper box. Mell lifted the lid. A muff and tippet lay inside, made of yellow and brown fur like the back of a tortoise-shell cat. These were beautiful, too. Then came rolls of calico and woollen pieces, some of which were very pretty, and would make ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... specially deep ones slanting downwards from the nose on either side of the mouth. Above the nose there was a sort of bump, from which the low forehead slightly retreated to the curves of strong white hair. The ears were large but well shaped. In order to read he had put on pince-nez with tortoise-shell rimmed glasses, from which hung a rather broad black riband. His thin figure looked stiff even in an arm-chair. His big brown-red hands held the book up. His legs were crossed, and his feet were strongly defined by the snowy white spats which partially concealed the varnished ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... marquetry. The bed, of chintz, with chintz curtains lined with pink, was one of those duchess beds so common in the eighteenth century, which had a tuft of carved feathers at the top of each of the four posts, which were fluted on the sides. An old clock, inclosed in a sort of monument made of tortoise-shell inlaid with arabesques of ivory, decorated the mantelpiece, the marble shelf of which, with the candlesticks and the mirror in a frame painted in cameo on a gray ground, presented a remarkable harmony of color, tone, and style. A large wardrobe, the doors of which were inlaid with ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... immediately ran to the assistance of the baboon; and after a little more scraping, he pulled out a live tortoise ...
— The Mission • Frederick Marryat
... this exclamation turns round, and I discover that from the other end of the room I have been gazing at the unexpressive features of her "back hair," which is twisted in a "pug," or "bob,"—which is the correct term?—and surmounted by a tortoise-shell comb. ...
— Autumn Leaves - Original Pieces in Prose and Verse • Various
... hands, and she grew homesick and lonesome. She thought of the well-stocked library of Black Hall; of her bright drawing-room, her birds, her flowers, her piano, her easel, her embroidery frame, her Skie terrier, her tortoise shell cat and kittens, her fond and faithful servant, the many grand rooms in the old hall; the negroes' cabins, the ancient trees, the river, the cascade, the mountains—the thousand means of occupation, amusement, and interest, within ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... Mercies, who held close within her loving heart the sorrows, hopes, and fears of woman's world. Ghosts of these spirits seemed to follow as we wandered through deserted courtyards, and an odour as of old incense perfumed the air. I went out and stood upon the tortoise that is left to guard the ruined temple; the great stone tortoise that is the symbol of longevity of our country, that even armies in their ...
— My Lady of the Chinese Courtyard • Elizabeth Cooper
... depend on inference. There is fact to bear us out. Mr. Bates, in his Naturalist on the River Amazons (2d ed., p. 376), describing three half-castes who accompanied him on a hunting trip, says—"Two of them were brothers, namely, Joao (John) and Zephyrino Jabuti: Jabuti, or tortoise, being a nickname which their father had earned for his slow gait, and which, as is usual in this country, had descended as the surname of the family." Let me add the statement made by Mr. Wallace respecting this same region, that "one of the tribes on the river Isanna is called 'Jurupari' (Devils). ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... thing to have. She sat on a bench against the wall wondering, for the lovely clean stillness of the room encouraged thinking, and the clink of her father's hammers on the pipes fell presently into the regular tink-tink-a-tink of tortoise-shell rattles, keeping time to the shuffle and beat of bare feet on the dancing-place by the river. The path to it led across a clearing between little hillocks of freshly turned earth, and the high forest ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al
... all the particulars,' answered Lee, with an easy transition from a sentimental to a common-sense, business-like tone, and at the same time unscrewing the lid of a tortoise-shell tobacco-box, and taking a folded paper from it. 'I keep these matters generally here; for if I were to drop such an article—just now, especially—I might as well be hung ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 431 - Volume 17, New Series, April 3, 1852 • Various
... best I ever tasted. Garcia's officers seemed just as much excited over nothing as he was, but were exceedingly friendly, treating us with an exaggerated "comrades-in-arms" and "brother-officers" sort of manner. The young man who entertained me was quite a swell, with a tortoise-shell visor to his cap and a Malacca sword-cane which swung from a gold cord. He was as much pleased over it as a boy with his first watch, and informed me that it had been used to assassinate his uncle, ex- President Rojas. As he seemed to consider it a very valuable heirloom, I moved my ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... having a head very like that of a snake, with a dark green shell spotted with yellow, it produces excellent soup; the body is exceedingly flat, and the projecting edges of the shell are soft; it runs extremely fast upon the shore, and is suggestive of the tortoise that beat the hare in the well-known race. Throughout the Nile and its tributaries there are varieties of fish and reptiles closely connected, and the link can be distinctly traced in the progression of development. There is a fish with a hard bony frame, or shell, ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... foolish action and consequent waste of time. For Devachan is a state of consciousness, the consciousness of the Soul escaped for awhile from the net of gross matter, and may be entered at any time by one who has learned to withdraw his Soul from the senses as the tortoise withdraws itself within its shell. And then, coming forth once more, action is prompt, direct, purposeful, and the time "wasted" in meditation is more than saved by the directness and strength ...
— Death—and After? • Annie Besant
... in his way. Two half-grown llamas, which are naturally as quiet and timid as sheep, bit each other very furiously, until they foamed at the mouth. And, lastly, a large mastiff made his appearance, walking in a slow, measured gait, with a sleek tortoise-shell cat on his back; and she, in turn, was surmounted by a mouse, which formed the apex of ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... Lyonet worked for years on the willow caterpillar, Strauss Durckheim devoted an even minuter attention to the common cockchafer, and the great Bojanus investigated almost every fibre in the structure of the tortoise. The volumes produced by these anatomists were valuable and memorable, and occupy an honoured place in the library of science, but Huxley's aim was wider and greater. He showed how careful study of one of the ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... I have nothing in that line to offer you. This evening I can show you some neighbors who resemble the tribes of the Tortoise of the Great Serpent—these are the only natives I can dispose of. At present you will only see my husband, two ladies who are almost widows, and a young lady" ... here Mad. de Lorgeville was seized with a new fit of laughter ... finally ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... "a fantastical natural history, a sort of mythology of plants and stones, to which the most extraordinary virtues are attributed[22]." "I have heard," says Camilla, bashfully excusing herself for taking up the cudgels of argument with the learned Surius, "that the Tortoise in India when the sunne shineth, swimmeth above the water wyth hyr back, and being delighted with the fine weather, forgetteth her selfe until the heate of the sunne so harden her shell, that she cannot sink ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson
... news indeed! But where was the child? Nanna stood stock-still, gazing stupidly around the empty room. "Esmay," she murmured, in a half-whisper, and passed out into the corridor. She went straight to the door leading to Quinton Edge's apartments. A tiny hair-pin of tortoise-shell lay on the floor. Nanna picked it up with a sob and regarded it fixedly. She knocked twice upon the door, but there was no response. She tried her strength against it, and shook her head. Nothing could be done here. She went down-stairs, ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... reason. On the other hand, if the conformation of his organs, as it happens with those of a phlegmatic temperament, of a dull habit, does not permit him to move, except with feebleness, in a sluggish manner, his experience is slow, frequently unprofitable. The tortoise and the butterfly are alike incapable of preventing their destruction. The stupid man, equally with him who is intoxicated, are in that state which renders it impossible for them to arrive at or attain the ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... Combs—the set of combs, side and back, that Della had worshipped long in a Broadway window. Beautiful combs, pure tortoise shell, with jewelled rims—just the shade to wear in the beautiful vanished hair. They were expensive combs, she knew, and her heart had simply craved and yearned over them without the least hope of possession. And now, they were hers, but the tresses that ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... linger over the melody; there were movements that she would play with tenderness and others with little bursts of passion. She bent over the piano, then rose again, the light playing on the top of her tortoise-shell comb one moment, while the next moment it could scarcely be seen in her black hair. The two candles on the piano flickered to the noise, throwing a light over her profile or sending their flame over her forehead, her cheeks, ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... young ones!" commanded the crippled girl, in her sharp way. "Remember the hare would have won the race easily if he hadn't laid down to nap beside the course. Come! some tortoise will beat you in French and Latin yet, Helen, if you don't keep to work. And go to work at that English composition, Ruthie Remissness! You'd both be as lazy as Ludlum's dog if it ...
— Ruth Fielding at Briarwood Hall - or Solving the Campus Mystery • Alice B. Emerson
... abundance of gold and silver, with jewels, pearls, silk, and vast quantities of rich stuffs of all kinds, which are only considered as moveables or merchandize; and from foreign commerce they derive ivory, frankincense, copper in bars, tortoise shell, and unicorns horns, with which they adorn their girdles. Of animals they have abundance, particularly of beasts of burden; such as oxen, horses, asses, and camels; but they have no Arabian horses. They have an ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... tablets, tooth-picks, card and needle-cases, pocket mirrors, housewives, paper presses, port-crayons, rulers, seals, musical snuff-boxes, etc., etc. The above articles being executed in every possible variety that can be imagined, of tortoise-shell, ivory, or mother of pearl, inlaid with gold and silver in the richest and most elaborate manner, miniature frames of every description, composed of fancy woods, with chased circles, metal gilt, stamped tortoise-shell, bronze and of every ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... tomatoes lay along the ledges of the windows, and a tortoise-shell cat snoozed on one of the broad sills. The tall clock in the corner ticked peacefully. Priscilla Hollis never tired of looking at the jolly red-cheeked moon, the group of stars on a blue ground, the trig little ship, the old house, and ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... little, buttery fleurs-de-lis on the floor. She escaped the disastrous fire, not, like a dozen other fowls, by seeking refuge in the wind-break, but because she was in the coal-shed carrying on a hand-to-hand conflict with the tortoise-shell cat, who had ...
— The Biography of a Prairie Girl • Eleanor Gates
... school in your pocket?" Well, you see, that is how Tommy's mother talks to him, so he knew what to do, and, looking up into the Headmaster's face with that wistful look of his, he imparted the deep secret that he had a tortoise. ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 11, 1914 • Various
... the globe as the descendants of Noah, without a written language. The Hindoo therefore in his belief that the earth was actually drawn up at the flood, by the tusks of a boar, and that it rests at this hour on the back of a tortoise: and the North American Indian in his wild supposition that Waesackoochack, whose reputed father was a snake, formed the present beautiful order of creation after the deluge, by the help of a musk-rat, ...
— The Substance of a Journal During a Residence at the Red River Colony, British North America • John West
... Tortoise-Shell (LANE) would have made an excellent short story, but to pursue its farcical developments through three hundred pages requires a considerable amount of perseverance. The scene of Mr. PETER BLUNDER'S book is laid in tropical ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 17, 1917 • Various
... the circular gallery, from which the passages branched off, were piled little beams of algummim, bags of Lawsonia, cakes of Lemnos-earth, and tortoise carapaces filled with pearls. The Suffet brushed them with his robe as he passed without even looking at some gigantic pieces of amber, an almost divine material formed by the ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... till I came here, and then I suddenly found I could. Princess Ruby declares I make it all up—but I don't. I can even understand what some of the animals have to say, and its rather fun sometimes. The other morning in the Gardens I heard a tortoise telling ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... saw a grave Chinaman standing on a stage-like platform. He wore a long coat, beautifully flowered, and a hat with a turned up brim. Balanced on his nose were enormous tortoise-shell spectacles. A ragged gray moustache drooped from the corners of his mouth and a ragged wisp of whisker hung from his chin. She was informed by Ah Cum that the Chinaman was one of the literati and that he was expounding ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... with a little laugh. "I'd imagined you a horrid elderly person with a white cravat and tortoise-shell spectacles. It is such ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed
... a tortoise—is fond of his shell; but if you put a live coal on his back, he crawls out of it. So the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... the temperature of the body and care is taken to prevent their drying. By this method many investigations have been made of muscular contractions in isolated muscles. Landois has noted that the muscles of a man may be made to contract two hours and a half after removal, those of the frog and the tortoise 10 days after. Recently Burrows (1911) has noted a slight increase in the myotomes of the embryo chick after they have been kept for 2 to 6 days in ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... old tortoise-shell cat. He had a crumpled ear. He had a great scar across his nose. He had a broken leg ...
— Fairy Prince and Other Stories • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... afterward a water monster, lay at that doorway. Acihi Estsan (Salt-woman) was in the west, and her house was of the substance of a mirage; the youth Co'nen[)i]li (Water-sprinkler) danced before her door. In the north Cqaltlaqale[1] made a house of green duckweed, and S[)i]stel' (Tortoise) ...
— Navaho Houses, pages 469-518 • Cosmos Mindeleff
... paper on the wide porch—a young man then, with a big frame and a habit of looking out very solemn from under his eyebrows and over big tortoise-shell glasses. But he had boyish, joking ways of speech, as you know. He came down the walk between the plats of grass that looked like two peaceful, green rugs spread in the midst of all the noise and bustle of the town, and his long hands pulled up ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... most musical of their instruments. The mandolin is by way of being a guitar, or banjo—only in a very small way indeed. Nothing has been added to the idea since first Mercury stumbled on the original testudo—indeed, I should guess that the dried sinews of a tortoise would give out a far purer sound than the jingling wires with which the mandolin is mounted. I have sometimes stood at the door of a cafe, or, to give it the real name [Greek: kapheneion], and listened in wonder to the strains of some minstrel holding forth within. The wonder ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... years had several times appeared at war charity garden-parties as a classical dancer—to the great delight of the guests and greater disgust of her family. Her maternal uncle, head of her house, said to be the most blase member of the British peerage and known as "the noble tortoise," was generally considered to have pronounced the final verdict upon his golden-haired niece when he declared "she ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... further end of the gallery a few blankets were lying, and with some mining implements, a kettle of water, a few worn flannel shirts, were the only articles which this subterranean habitation possessed. In turning over one of the blankets Aristides picked up a woman's comb. It was a tortoise-shell, and bright with some fanciful ornamentation. Without a moment's hesitation Aristides pocketed it as the natural property of M'liss. A pocketbook containing a few old letters in the breast pocket of one of the blue shirts was transferred to that of Aristides with the same coolness ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... were a crooked dial-plate, and himself the only figure on it. With hair and whiskers deficient in colour at all times, but feebler than common in the rich sunshine, and more like the coat of a sandy tortoise-shell cat; with long nails, nicely pared and sharpened; with a natural antipathy to any speck of dirt, which made him pause sometimes and watch the falling motes of dust, and rub them off his smooth white hand or glossy linen: Mr Carker the Manager, sly of manner, sharp of tooth, ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... kept in the great medicine lodge are four sacks of water, called Eeh-teeh-ka, sewed together, each of them in the form of a tortoise lying on its back, with a bunch of eagle feathers attached to its tail. "These four tortoises," they told me, "contained the waters from the four quarters of the world—that those waters had been contained therein ever since the settling down of the waters," "I did not," ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... we have smashed them beneath their tortoise, like an egg in its shell! Now ply your bows, brave boys! now hurl your javelins! Well shot! well shot indeed, my Niger! You hit that high-crested centurion full in the mouth, as he called on them to rally, and nailed his tongue to his jaws. Give me another ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... off a boy to the Mendez house with word that I was coming, sent out for flowers and made a lovely little fuss about me. I tried to make myself look as pretty as possible in a pale tulle, with little rosy wreaths upon it, and the high old tortoise-shell comb, that had been mother's, in my hair. The excitement gave me more color than I had had for weeks. I thought, "Even if I am not happy, at least I ...
— The Other Side of the Door • Lucia Chamberlain
... doubt due to the same cause that some butterflies on small and exposed islands have their wings reduced in size, as is strikingly the case with the small tortoise-shell butterfly (Vanessa urticae) inhabiting the Isle of Man, which is only about half the size of the same species in England or Ireland; and Mr. Wollaston notes that Vanessa callirhoe—a closely allied South European ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... me to wait for his return. I figured him to myself lying dressed on his bed sleeping like a stone. But there was no denying that the mother was holding me with an awful, tortured interest. Twice Therese had opened the door, had put her small head in and drawn it back like a tortoise. But for some time I had lost the sense of us two being quite alone in the studio. I had perceived the familiar dummy in its corner but it lay now on the floor as if Therese had knocked it down angrily with a broom for ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... terminating below in a tortoise. It is devouring a gourd, which it grasps greedily with both hands; it wears a cap ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... least like gold or copper or bronze—I scorn the hackneyed similes of metallurgical poets—but a straightforward yellow, darkening at the roots; and she wore it low down on her neck in great coils that were held in place by a multitude of little golden hair-pins and divers corpulent tortoise-shell ones. Item, her nose was a tiny miracle of perfection; and this was noteworthy, for you will observe that Nature, who is an adept at eyes and hair and mouths, very rarely achieves a creditable nose. Item, she had a mouth; and if you are a Gradgrindian with a taste for hairsplitting, ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... the report of the rifle. I lay flat on my stomach, grovelled my face into the sandy soil and lay like a snake and as still as a tortoise. ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave
... children. They were all screaming and talking at the tops of their voices, and seemed to be in a state of great excitement about something, and on his going up to them to see what was the matter he saw that they were tormenting a tortoise. First one boy pulled it this way, then another boy pulled it that way, while a third child beat it with a stick, and the fourth hammered ...
— Japanese Fairy Tales • Yei Theodora Ozaki
... nervous staccato laugh broke from her thin lips, and her fingers began to play with a long tortoise-shell paper-knife. ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... was delighted with Julia's skill in working lace."—O. B. Peirce cor. "And it is because each of them represents two different words, that the confusion has arisen."—Booth cor. "AEschylus died of a fracture of his skull, caused by an eagle's dropping of a tortoise on his head." Or:—"caused by a tortoise which an eagle let fall on his head."—Biog. Dict. cor. "He doubted whether they had it."—Felch cor. "To make ourselves clearly understood, is the chief end of speech."—Sheridan cor. "One cannot discover in their countenances ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... Drawing-room, the Red Drawing-room, the State Bed-room, and the various other rooms and corridors, are priceless treasures of art; for besides invaluable paintings by the greatest masters, there are here beautiful pieces of furniture, made of tortoise-shell and inlaid with gold or pearl, and ancient marriage-chests, which once belonged to Italian princesses of bygone days. The armory contains one of the most valuable collections in England, and in the State Bed-room are many relics of Queen Anne. One really wearies of ...
— John and Betty's History Visit • Margaret Williamson
... not navigate in the inclement seasons. But in summer the great inland sea was white with sails. Great fleets brought corn from Gaul, Spain, Sardinia, Africa, Sicily, and Egypt. This was the most important trade. But a considerable commerce was carried on in ivory, tortoise-shell, cotton and silk fabrics, pearls and precious stones, gums, spices, wines, wool, oil. Greek and Asiatic wines, especially the Chian and Lesbian, were in great demand at Rome. The transport of earthenware, made generally in the Grecian cities; of wild animals for the amphitheatre; of marble, ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... by indulging himself in all Manner of expensive Pleasures. It was but seldom that an Inferior was suffer'd to speak to him; but not a Soul durst contradict him: No Peacock was more gay; no Turtle more amorous; and no Tortoise more indolent and inactive. He made false Glory and false Pleasures ...
— Zadig - Or, The Book of Fate • Voltaire
... things," declared Herb, carelessly. "Sometimes a native can save twenty miles by shooting through where a passage runs across a neck of wooded land. But I guess the good old Comfort will stick to the main stream. I may be the tortoise in this race, but there's lots of chances the hares will lie down for a little nap in the way, and let me ...
— Motor Boat Boys Mississippi Cruise - or, The Dash for Dixie • Louis Arundel
... stood In sturdy columns, bearing up the roof; Onyx and porphyry on the spacious floor Were trodden 'neath the foot; the mighty gates Of Maroe's throughout were formed, He mere adornment; ivory clothed the hall, And fixed upon the doors with labour rare Shells of the tortoise gleamed, from Indian seas, With frequent emeralds studded. Gems of price And yellow jasper on the couches shone. Lustrous the coverlets; the major part Dipped more than once within the vats of ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... Monkey The Mouse that Fell into the Pot The Fox and the Grapes The Carter and Hercules The Young Cocks The Arab and the Camel The Nightingale and the Swallow The Husbandman and the stork The Pine The Woman and Her Maid-Servants The Lamp The Tortoise ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... crews of which had jumped into the sea, were captured. Of great length and well made, these boats were decorated in front with a man's head carved, the eyes of which were formed of mother of pearl, the ears of tortoise-shell, and the ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... anecdotes in this book will clearly show facts of this nature. In the Letter of the Gorilla, under an appearance of exaggeration, will be found many facts of its history. We have a strong belief that natural history, written as White of Selborne did his Letter of Timothy the Tortoise, would be very enticing and interesting to young people. To make birds and other animals relate their stories has been done sometimes, and generally with success. There are anecdotes hinging, however, on animals which have more to ...
— Heads and Tales • Various |
