"Snail" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Battle Ground, where they drove a snug little business, and fought a great many small pitched battles for a great many contending parties. Though it could hardly be said of these conflicts that they were running fights - for in truth they generally proceeded at a snail's pace - the part the Firm had in them came so far within the general denomination, that now they took a shot at this Plaintiff, and now aimed a chop at that Defendant, now made a heavy charge at an estate in Chancery, and now had some light skirmishing among an irregular body of small debtors, ...
— The Battle of Life • Charles Dickens
... how to be even more brutal, for that was Dennis Kavanagh's style of attack. He came out upon the porch, a broad, stocky chunk of a man, with eyebrows sticking up like the horns on a snail, and the eyes beneath them keen with humor of the grim ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... spring And day's at the morn: Morning's at seven; The hillside's dew-pearled; The lark's on the wing; The snail's on the thorn: God's in his heaven— All's right with ...
— Grace Harlowe's Problem • Jessie Graham Flower
... to return to the light. Here our guide strips naked, and suddenly leaps head foremost into a black deep swirling current between rocks. Five minutes later he reappears, and clambering out lays at my feet a living, squirming sea-snail and an enormous shrimp. Then he resumes his robe, and we ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... a sandy hollow which was deep under water in the great January freshet. That freshet deposited a new layer of sand and also bushels of clam and snail shells of all sizes and species. They lie so thick they may be taken up by the shovelful. Two or three dead fish are also found. What a fine fossiliferous stratum will be found here about a ...
— Some Winter Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... in my prayers to God. I am thinking that I may be likened to stagnant water, that is not good, that nobody drinks, and that does not run down in brooks, upon the banks of which kumara and trees grow. My heart is all rock, all rock, and no good thing will grow upon it. The lizard and the snail run over the rocks, and all evil runs over ...
— A History of the English Church in New Zealand • Henry Thomas Purchas
... only there are about three thousand of them. Each one of these is supposed to respond, or vibrate, to a particular tone, or sound. This keyboard, from the fact that, to save space, it is coiled upon itself like a sea-shell, instead of running straight, is called the cochlea (Greek for "snail-shell"); it is also called, because it is the deepest, or innermost, part of the hearing ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson
... lengthen and grow interminable, and their pace, although rapid, was to Robert like that of a snail. Yet the longest journey must come to an end. The new island rose at last before them, larger than the others but like the rest ...
— The Lords of the Wild - A Story of the Old New York Border • Joseph A. Altsheler
... instantaneously gauged as dyspeptic or eupeptic, friend or foe. On the march, Javert was on the alert, snuffing up the air, until some savory odor crossed his path, when he would shut himself up, like a snail within his shell. Yet he was not sleeping, for no titbit ever passed the portals beneath. Perhaps, however, they were themselves trusty now, having made habit a second nature. I cannot imagine them watering ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... as on the dam. Jim's eighteen hours a day often stretched into twenty, though he sometimes dozed in his office chair or in the automobile with Oscar, reveling in his new-learned accomplishment, driving at a snail's pace. ...
— Still Jim • Honore Willsie Morrow
... you walk a little faster?" said a whiting to a snail, "There's a porpoise close behind us, and he's treading on my tail. See how eagerly the lobsters and the turtles all advance! They are waiting on the shingle—will you come and join the dance? Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, will you join the dance? ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... of the Osage nation was a snail. It was when the earth was young and little. It was before the rivers had become wide or long, or the mountains lifted their peaks above the clouds, that the snail found himself passing a quiet existence on the banks of the River Missouri. His wants and ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends: North American Indian • Anonymous
... 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 it loves its ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne
... time crept on at a snail pace the howling of the wintry gale continued unabated, with the roar of the wind through the tree-tops ashore, the dash of the waves on the point above, and the constant wabbling motion of the shanty-boat to remind them ...
— The House Boat Boys • St. George Rathborne
... weeks, the inner sides of the glass will show a green tinge, which soon increases and interferes with the view. This is owing to the growth of a minute confervoid vegetation, which must be kept down. For this purpose the Snail is the natural remedy, being the ready scavenger of all such nuisances. Snails cling to the sides, and clean away and consume all this vegetable growth. The Lymnea is among the most efficient, but unfortunately is destructive, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... But it was no serpent singing, Nor a sacred lizard calling, It was but the mountain-berry Calling to the lonely maiden: "Come, O virgin, come and pluck me, Come and take me to thy bosom, Take me, tinsel-breasted virgin, Take me, maiden, copper-belted, Ere the slimy snail devours me, Ere the black-worm feeds upon me. Hundreds pass my way unmindful, Thousands come within my hearing, Berry-maidens swarm about me, Children come in countless numbers, None of these has come to gather, Come to pluck this ruddy ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... came 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
... traffic, was like a gutter. On either side spread the blanket of soft snow crystals. If a man turned into this in an endeavor to pass, his dogs would wallow perforce to their bellies and slow down to a snail's pace. So the men lay close to their leaping sleds and waited. No alteration in position occurred down the fifteen miles of Bonanza and Klondike to Dawson, where the Yukon was encountered. Here the first relays ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London
... the red-capp'd worm that's shut Within the concave of a nut, Brown as his tooth. A little moth Late fatten'd in a piece of cloth: With withered cherries, mandrakes' ears, Moles' eyes; to these the slain stag's tears The unctuous dewlaps of a snail, The broke-heart of a nightingale O'ercome in music; with a wine Ne'er ravish'd from the flattering vine, But gently press'd from the soft side Of the most sweet and dainty bride, Brought in a dainty daisy, which He fully quaffs up to ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... has to be made at a snail's pace, the precipitous slopes close under our horses' hoofs being frightful to contemplate. This drive is an excellent preparation for an exploration of the Lozere. We are always, metaphorically, going up or coming down ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... 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
... 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
... also gave him a coach drawn by six small mice, This made the queen angry, because she had 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 an empty snail-shell, and there lay till he was almost starved; when, peeping out of the hole, he saw a fine butterfly settle on the ground: he now ventured out, and getting astride, the butterfly took wing, and mounted into the air with little Tom on his back. Away he flew from field ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... forth, and up the hill, until we were practically on the top. The country was beautiful, and by the roadside we found magnificent red slugs (Arion ater var. lamarckii[3]) and many fine snails, including the so-called Roman snail, Helix pomatia. We accosted the peasants, and enquired about the "fossilen." The word seemed to have no meaning for them, so we tried to elucidate it in the manner of the guide: where were the "stein fossilen"? Immediately, with animation, we were shown a road going westward to the town of ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... with an axe, when I had time, and cut the trunk open. A week elapsed before I again went to the woods, when, on cutting into the cavity of the tree, I found a pair of tree-toads, male and female, and a large, shelless snail. Whether the presence of the snail was accidental, or whether these creatures associated together for some purpose, I do not know. The male toad was easily distinguished from the female by its large head, and more thin, slender, and angular body. The female was much the more beautiful, both in ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... may break his neck. My word! but Mrs. Slooman tells me pretty stories of Sloo's doings with the harriers—jumping over hurdles, and everything that comes in the way, and galloping along the stony lanes as if the wind was a snail compared to his horse. I tell you. Jog, you ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... tell," don Andres 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
... the spring, And day's at the morn; Morning's at seven; The hillside's dew-pearled; The lark's on the wing; The snail's on the thorn; God's in His heaven— All's ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various
... mysterious light became stronger and soon they could make out the conformation of the rock walls they were passing at such a snail's pace. Layers of vari-colored rock showed here and there, and, at one point there was a stratum of gold-bearing or mica-filled rock that glistened with a million reflections and re-reflections. The air grew warmer and more humid as they neared ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... rounded hillock, on which are a snail and spray of possible foxglove, and out of which grow a red carnation and another flower. In the upper right-hand corner is a gabled cottage with a tree, and under it a moth, flower, and caterpillar. Towards the upper left-hand corner is a bank of cloud with red and yellow ...
— English Embroidered Bookbindings • Cyril James Humphries Davenport
... time to the journey's end, we met almost every day long trains of government wagons, laden with stores for the troops and crawling at a snail's ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... Yangtze and those connected with the capital by railway, was common knowledge; but one found it hard to believe that the west and the south-west of the empire were moved by the same spirit of Europeanism, and it will be seen that China in the west moves, if at all, but at a snail's pace: the second part of this volume deals with ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... Excellence Baron de Goldburg, Leading the Dowager Duchess of Snail; Feathers and fringe on the top of her bonnet, Roses and rings on the end of ...
— Five Mice in a Mouse-trap - by the Man in the Moon. • Laura E. Richards
... his head, like a muffin-man carries his tray. It was a great thing, you never would have thought he could have carried it, and it was easy to see that it was as much as he could manage; it bent him nearly double, and he went crawling along like a snail,—it took him quite a time to get to the ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... the sweet form was about to repose. This glance, full of amorous intelligence, awoke the lady's fantasy, who, half laughing and half smitten, repeated "To-morrow," and dismissed him with a gesture which the Pope Jehan himself would have obeyed, especially as he was like a snail without a shell, since the Council had just deprived him of ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... embryo! Sure I was born with budding antlers like a young satyr, or a citizen's child, 'sdeath, to be out-witted, to be out-jilted, out-matrimonied. If I had kept my speed like a stag, 'twere somewhat, but to crawl after, with my horns like a snail, and be outstripped by my ...
— The Way of the World • William Congreve
... do not reason like this jester. But the truth is that it is very difficult for an honest man in the midst of political entanglements as Vaudrey was, to realize his dream. When opportunities arise—those opportunities that march only at a snail's pace—one is not allowed to make use of them, they are snatched from one. They arrive, only to take wings again. And in those posts of daily combat, one has not only against one the enemies who attack one openly, which would be but a slight matter, a touch with a goad or a prick ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... 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 be that obtain; therefore ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Vol. 2 (of 10) • Grenville Kleiser
... sir; but mind 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 ...
— The Young Castellan - A Tale of the English Civil War • George Manville Fenn
... left him. The other three could not go much farther. Every article that was of no present use was thrown from the wagon to lighten it, and left lying on the plain; but still the poor brutes were scarce able to drag it along. We went at a snail's pace. ...
— The Desert Home - The Adventures of a Lost Family in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... 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
... current from the far-off Gulf Stream pushed my hulk onward; and this, I suppose, was helped a little by that attraction of floating bodies for each other which brings chips and leaves together on the surface of even the stillest pool. But a snail goes faster than I was going; and it was only at the end of a full hour of watching that I could see—yet even then could not be quite certain about it—that my position ...
— In the Sargasso Sea - A Novel • Thomas A. Janvier
... 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 "THE BIRDS ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph, Volume 1, Number 2, February, 1897 • anonymous
... sign; or the sign is the shell, and mine host is the snail. He consists of double beer and fellowship, and his vices are the bawds of his thirst. He entertains humbly, and gives his guests power, as well of himself as house. He answers all men's expectations to his power, save in the reckoning; and hath gotten ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... 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 ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... Both king and attendant are enveloped in long robes, in which there is no indication of folds, though fringes and tassels are elaborately rendered. The faces are of a strongly marked Semitic cast, but without any attempt at portraiture. The hair of the head ends in several rows of snail-shell curls, and the king's beard has rows of these curls alternating with more natural-looking portions. Little is displayed of the body except the fore-arms, whose anatomy, though intelligible, is coarse and false. As for minor matters, such as the too high position of the ears, and the unnatural ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell
... 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 Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... Helston, dusk had fallen. She found a carriage that would drive her the twelve miles to the coast. It was a quiet, grey evening and as they jolted slowly along the dusty roads and climbed the steep hills at a snail's pace, she leaned back too tired to feel anything any longer. And now they were out upon the moors where the gorse was breaking into flowers; and now, over the sea, she saw at last the great beacon of the Lizard lighthouse sweeping the ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... walks avail, To clear the leaf, and pick the snail, Then wantonly to death decree An insect usefuller than thee? Thou and the worm are brother-kind, As low, as ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... length of its course in 24 hours, it would have gone a thousand feet, that is 300 braccia, which is the sixth of a mile. Whence it would follow that the course of the sun during the day would be the sixth part of a mile and that this venerable snail, the sun will have travelled ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... cousinry seizes a victim, he is so carefully gagged and bound that complaint is impossible; he is smeared with slime and wax like a snail in a beehive. This invisible, imperceptible tyranny is upheld by powerful reasons,—such as the wish to be surrounded by their own family, to keep property in their own hands, the mutual help they ought to lend each other, the guarantees given to the administration by the fact ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... the hole in a ring, looking at the creature they had found. It was worth looking at. Its eyes were on long horns like a snail's eyes, and it could move them in and out like telescopes; it had ears like a bat's ears, and its tubby body was shaped like a spider's and covered with thick soft fur; its legs and arms were furry too, and it had hands and feet like ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit
... plays many parts: His acts being seven ages. At first the infant, Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms: And then, the whining school-boy with his satchel, And shining morning-face, creeping like snail Unwillingly to school. And then, the lover; Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad Made to his mistress' eye-brow. Then, a soldier; Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard, Jealous in honour, sudden and quick ...
— The Art Of Poetry An Epistle To The Pisos - Q. Horatii Flacci Epistola Ad Pisones, De Arte Poetica. • Horace
... the rocks through this neck; toward it all trails inside the Gap converge. De Spain gave his horse his head—it was still too dark to distinguish the path—and depended on his towering landmarks for his general direction. He advanced at a snail's pace until he passed the base of El Capitan, when of a sudden, as he rode out from among high projecting rocks full into the opening, faint rays of light from the eastern dawn revealed the narrow, strangely enclosed and perfectly ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... circumstances and at some times, is extreme in her reticences, under other circumstances or at other times, may be extreme in her abandonment. Not that her modesty is an artificial garment, which she throws off or on at will. It is organic, but like the snail's shell, it sometimes forms an impenetrable covering, and sometimes glides off almost altogether. A man's modesty is more rigid, with little tendency to deviate toward either extreme. Thus it is, that, when uninstructed, a man is apt to be impatient with a woman's reticences, and yet shocked ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... relations do. Different genera of caddises differ in their mode of building. Some fasten together fragments of water-weeds and plant refuse, others take tiny particles of stone, of which they make firmly compacted walls, others again lay hold of water-snail shells, which may even contain live inhabitants, and bind these into a limy rampart behind which their bodies are in ...
— The Life-Story of Insects • Geo. H. Carpenter
... moved slowly, slowly, at a snail's pace; the wheels sank into the snow; the entire body of the coach creaked and groaned; the horses slipped, puffed, steamed, and the coachman's long whip cracked incessantly, flying hither and thither, coiling up, then flinging out its length like a slender serpent, ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... great ability, as has been set forth, really derived it, to a great extent, from the secret preferential freight rates that he had on the Vanderbilt railroads. A variety of other coercive methods were used by Vanderbilt. Special freight trains were purposely delayed and run at snail's pace in order to force shippers to pay the extraordinary rates demanded for shipping over the Merchant's Dispatch, a fast freight line ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... she interjected sharply, "and the snail-soup, and the dirty blanket under the hedge, and the constable on the road behind, always just behind, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... soldier, distinguished by the greatest exposure and privation. The occupation of a boatman was more calculated to destroy the constitution and to shorten life than any other business. In ascending the river it was a continued series of toil, rendered more irksome by the snail-like rate at which they moved. The boat was propelled by poles, against which the shoulder was placed, and the whole strength and skill of the individual were applied in this manner. As the boatmen moved along the running board, with their heads nearly touching the plank on which they walked, ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... We watched it crawl, snail-like, over the virgin sky. We panted in its heat. We saw it drop again behind the mountain wall, leaving the sky gorgeously barred with colour from a tawny orange glow to an ice-pale green—a regular pousse cafe of a sunset. Then when the cold and the dark ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... bounds forward to the flowing udder, and with his walling eyes reflecting whole acres of "calf heaven" and his little tail wiggling in speechless bliss, he draws his evening meal from nature's commissariat. The snail lolls in his shell and thinks himself a king in the grandest palace in the world. And how brilliant is the horizon of the firefly when ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... casting a hurried glance in her direction she perceived her tall figure swaying from side to side, as if under an intolerable strain of feeling. Her eyes were on the clock, the hands of which seemed to creep with snail-like pace along the dial, when unexpectedly, and a full minute before the minute hand had reached the stroke of five, Violet caught a movement on her part, saw the flash of something round and white show for an ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... to that of ordinary works as the orbit of Uranus to the orbit of Mercury. For the moment they get no justice done to them. People are at a loss how to treat them; so they leave them alone, and go their own snail's pace for themselves. Does the worm see the ...
— The Art of Literature • Arthur Schopenhauer
... broadly what was called the Humanitarian cause. It did not mean the cause of humanity, but rather, if anything, the cause of everything else. At its noblest it meant a sort of mystical identification of our life with the whole life of nature. So a man might wince when a snail was crushed as if his toe were trodden on; so a man might shrink when a moth shrivelled as if his own hair had caught fire. Man might be a network of exquisite nerves running over the whole universe, a subtle spider's web of pity. This was a fine conception; though perhaps a somewhat ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... "now I come to think of it. Only natural they should be going at snail's pace. Carrai! the wonder is the gringo being able for even that, or go at all. I thought I'd given him his quietus, for surely I sent my spear right through his ribs! It must have struck button, or buckle, or something, ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... snail-water for a consumption. Take half a peck of Shell-snails, wipe them and bruise them Shells and all in a Mortar; put to them a gallon of New Milk; as also Balm, Mint, Carduus, unset Hyssop, and Burrage, of each one handful; ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home
... structural possibilities of that division of the Animal Kingdom,—without recalling to my readers a Polyp or a Jelly-Fish, a Sea-Urchin or a Star-Fish. Neither can I present the structural elements of the Mollusk plan, without reminding them of an Oyster or a Clam, a Snail or a Cuttle-Fish,—or of the Articulate plan, without calling up at once the form of a Worm, a Lobster, or an Insect,—or of the Vertebrate plan, without giving it the special character of Fish, Reptile, Bird, or Mammal. Yet I insist that all ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... most freshwater and land shells is exceedingly easy, the greater number of specimens requiring only to be plunged into boiling water, and the contents removed—an easy operation in the case of the bivalves, and the contents of univalves or snail-like shells being also easily wormed out with a pin or crooked awl. [Footnote: Mr. R. B. Woodward, F.G.S, etc. in one of the very best and most practical of those wonderful little penny "Handbooks" for young collectors, advises ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... the experience of Gootes and myself, parachute landings had been ruled out as too hazardous, but someone happily thought of the use of snowshoes and it was on these clumsy means that tourists, at a high cost and at less than snail's pace, tramped wonderingly over the ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... someone loved me and trusted me to make myself a musician, I'd do it somehow—and I've about as much music in me as a snail!" she cried passionately. "You know I trusted you! It seems to me that if you can't remember for ten minutes, and try to be kind the very hour we're married, the whole thing ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... parents. In one we see the newly created and lovely Eve standing by the side of the sleeping Adam, and regarding him with pleasurable anticipation. Another shows us the animals marching in line to be inspected and named. The snail heads the procession and sets the pace. The lion and the tiger stroll gossiping together. The unicorn walks alone, very stiff and proud. Two rats and two mice are closely followed by two sleek cats, who keep them well covered, and plainly await the time when Eve's amiable indiscretion shall ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... slimy, crawling things!" More than once have I heard this kind of remark from youthful lips when I produced my grand old Roman snails and gave them a pleasant time for exercise upon the dewy lawn. Now in my secret mind I think a snail is a wonderfully curious creature, neither ugly nor "horrid"—it is slimy, but about that I shall have something ...
— Wild Nature Won By Kindness • Elizabeth Brightwen
... as she was watching him with eyes glowing and lips tightly closed, lest a cry of impatient agony should escape her throat, he,—like a snail that has shown its slimy horns too soon, and is not ready to face the enemy as yet,—seemed suddenly to withdraw within his former shell of careless suavity. The earnestness of his tone vanished, giving place to light and easy conversation, ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... she came to the topmost step of the staircase. Black with dust and cobwebs, damp, with slimy snail-tracks on the stones, it went winding down to the lowest story of the old house. The steps were worn and irregular. Long ago they had been built, for this was the most ancient part of the chateau. ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... I sketched was of the shape of a large leaf, upon which all the fibres were marked. It measured ten feet by four. Another bore a resemblance to a great conch-shell. Many were impressed with the roots of shrubs and the images of various surrounding objects—snail-shells, pebbles, twigs, and the like. On a larger scale, bubbling brooks, waterfalls, and whirlpools were represented—now no longer a burning flood, but stiff, stark, and motionless. One sketch, which is reproduced, bore a startling resemblance ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... the Tsay-ee-kah and of the Petrograd Soviet, lay miles out on the edge of the city, beside the wide Neva. I went there on a street-car, moving snail-like with a groaning noise through the cobbled, muddy streets, and jammed with people. At the end of the line rose the graceful smoke-blue cupolas of Smolny Convent outlined in dull gold, beautiful; and beside it the great barracks like faade of Smolny Institute, two hundred yards long and three ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... I'll take him through," said Emerson, stubbornly; and so they crawled their weary way, sore beset with their dragging burden. Slow at best, their advance now became snail-like, for darkness had fallen, and threatened to blot them out. It betrayed them down declivities, up and out of which they had to dig their way. In such descents they were forced to let go the helpless man, whose body rolled ahead of them like a boneless ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... ne'er open my beak, if the gods please, For such mean little fishes as these." He did it for less; | For it came to pass, That not another fish could he see; And, at last, so hungry was he, That he thought it of some avail To find on the bank a single snail. ...
— A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine
... ammonites by simply showing their temporary and systematic transitions into one another. In the fresh water chalk formation of Steinheim, near Heidenheim, in Wuertemberg, scientists have found, on the same place, in an uninterrupted series of strata, the snail valvata or paludina multiformis in all imaginable transitions—from the flat winding, showing the form of a chess-board, up to the sharp form of a tower. And it was not, as Hilgendorf thought, in a series ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid
... limit is really passed, and no scholar will admit that the perception and representation of a body, as it may take place in the brain of a Berthelot, can present any inferiority as a cognition of the absolute, to the pain felt by the snail I crush under my foot. Nobody except metaphysicians will acknowledge that psychology is a more precise and certain science than physics ...
— The Mind and the Brain - Being the Authorised Translation of L'me et le Corps • Alfred Binet
... with women endlessly, with meanness like a snail, and when his blood was up, to the most nonsensical place ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... pick up the thread of the melody but in vain. Then came the inevitable breakdown. She quit trying, and appealed pitifully to Signor Mancinelli for help. He seemed to have lost his head as completely as the lady had her memory. So had the prompter, who pulled his noddle into his shell like a snail and remained as mute. Signor Tamagno entered in character, and indulged in dumbshow to a few detached phrases from the orchestra. Then the awfulness of the situation overwhelmed him, and he fairly ran off the stage, leaving Matilda alone. That lady made a final appeal to the conductor, ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... one's horns; to retract an assertion through fear: metaphor borrowed from a snail, who on the apprehension of danger, draws in his horns, and retires to ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... delight the Frenchman. Also, it is a question whether snails, even if it were possible to obtain the superior Burgundian, fat and juicy and cooked even as our own Oscar used to prepare them for certain Waldorf guests, would ever appeal to the American taste, as even the common hedgerow sort of snail does to ...
— Twenty-four Little French Dinners and How to Cook and Serve Them • Cora Moore
... footmen that lay in squares and the fringe of dead horsemen that had charged them, and above on the slope the dead gunners, who lay round their broken piece. The Guards' column had left a streak right up the field like the trail of a snail, and at the head of it the blue coats were lying heaped upon the red ones where that fierce tug had been before ...
— The Great Shadow and Other Napoleonic Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... forgotten friend, a Snail, Beneath his house, with slimy trail, Crawls o'er the grass; whom, when he spies, In wrath he ...
— Favourite Fables in Prose and Verse • Various
... you heard the groan of a gravelled grouse, Or the snarl of a snaffled snail (Husband or mother, like me, or spouse), Have you lain a-creep in the darkened house Where the wounded ...
— Reginald • Saki
... along the dusty road. For hours the man had not been able to urge the beast out of a walk. The loss of time consequent upon his having followed wrong roads during the night and the exhaustion of the pony which retarded his speed to what seemed little better than a snail's pace seemed to assure the failure of his mission, for at best he could ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... handed the control of the second team to Wilson. He was very eager to have it and will do well I'm sure—but certainly also the dogs will not pull heavy loads—500 pounds proved a back-breaking load for 11 dogs to-day—they brought it at a snail's pace. Meares has estimated to give them two-thirds of a pound of biscuit a day. I have felt sure he ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... kept silent and was very glad he had done so, for, after an hour of snail-like pace through the streets they came in sight of a gigantic structure, in which Rollo could see thousands and thousands of ...
— Rollo in Society - A Guide for Youth • George S. Chappell
... not easily enticed out; he had his home where he hid himself like a snail in its shell. He had the responsibility for this little world of five people, and he had not even succeeded in securing it. His strength and industry were not enough even to keep one little home above water; a benefactor was needed for that! It was not the time to ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... in brown paper, mostly. Cows free in woods. Alligator tail good. Snail built up just like a conch (whelk). They eat good. Worms like a conch. Bile conch. Git it out shell. Grind it sausage grinder. Little onion. Black pepper. Rather eat conch than any kind of nourishment ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration
... other charm, nor conjuror, To raise infernal spirits up, but Fear, That makes men pull their horns in, like a snail, That's both a prisoner to itself and jail; Draws more fantastic shapes than in the grains Of knotted wood, in some men's crazy brains, When all the cocks they think they are, and bulls, Are only in the insides of ...
— Book of Wise Sayings - Selected Largely from Eastern Sources • W. A. Clouston
... conscience smite him at my naming the insects? I hope not. I hope you have not been tempted by Satan to do any harm to the little harmless, and often useful, creatures that cross your path. A butterfly, a cockchaffer, a house-fly, a snail, a caterpillar, a worm—these, and all others, are God's handy-work; and if you could see them through a glass that magnifies very much indeed, you would be more astonished than I can tell you. The small powder, scarcely seen on your finger's end, from the wing of a butterfly, is a lump ...
— Kindness to Animals - Or, The Sin of Cruelty Exposed and Rebuked • Charlotte Elizabeth
... the north, and pillowing her head on a cushioned thwart, gave herself up to dreamy contemplation on the sky. There was scarce a ripple on the lake. A faint breath of an offshore breeze fanned her, drifting the canoe at a snail's pace out from land. Stella luxuriated in the quiet afternoon. A party of campers cruising the lake had tarried at the bungalow till after midnight. Jack Fyfe had risen at dawn to depart for some distant logging point. Stella, once wakened, had ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... that I made seven days from Calais to Paris, by laying out my journeys at the rate of travelling in England, thirty miles a-day; and did not find but that I could have gone in a third of the time! I shall not be such a snail the next time. It is said that on Lord Tavistock's return, he is to decide whom he will marry. Is it true that the Choiseuls totter, and that the Broglios are to succeed; or is there a Charles Townshend at Versailles? ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... as one grown used to numbness, until last summer one Mistress Barbara visited the man-snail in his shell and exorcised him to come forth for an outing, to feed among fresh green leaves and breathe the perfume of flowers and young lives. When lo and behold, on the snail's return, the shell had ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... six small mice. This made the Queen angry, because she had 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 ...
— The History Of Tom Thumb and Other Stories. • Anonymous
... the simplicity of their structure is wont to be involved by many obscurities, it is necessary that we should approach the subject by the observation of the lower, imperfect animals."[19] So he wrote in the De viscerum structura, and accordingly he studied the liver first in the snail, then in fishes, reptiles, mammals, and finally man. In the introduction to his Anatome plantarum (1675), in which he laid the foundations of plant histology, he vindicates the comparative method in the following words:—"In the enthusiasm of youth I applied myself to Anatomy, and although ...
— Form and Function - A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology • E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell
... walks on which, from puppyhood, he had always 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 ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... procession following the northern trail. First came Lulu, white-clad, serious, pale, walking with Honey. The others, crowned with flowers and carrying garlands, followed, serious and silent, the women clinging with both hands to the men, who supported their snail-like, tottering progress with one arm about their waists. On the point of the northern reef, a cabin made of round beach-stones fronted the ocean. It fronted the rising sun now and a world, all ocean and sky, over ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... more or less fantastic speculation. The shells begin to assume such strange forms that observers speak occasionally of the "convulsions" or "death-contortions" of the expiring race. Some of the coiled shells take on a spiral form, like that of a snail's shell. Some uncoil the shell, and seem to be returning toward the primitive type. A rich eccentricity of frills and ornamentation is found more or less throughout the whole race. But every device—if we may so regard these changes—is useless, and the devastating agency of the Cretaceous, ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe
... 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
... Give me your lance, good man, and stick the point Here in the ground, and then the roof will be Held up in that direction. Thus it throws A broader shadow. Quickly, now! That's right! You other fellow, like a snail, you bear Your house upon your back, unless, perhaps, A house for some one else. Show me the shield! A mirror 'tis, in sooth! 'Tis crude, of course, As all is, here, but in a ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... to drive; she had driven the car at snail's pace the length of the drive leading from Upton House, and tried to turn out of the open ...
— The Second Honeymoon • Ruby M. Ayres
... up of a private car and a diner, was running on a slow order and crawled between the bluffs at a snail's pace. ...
— The Daughter of a Magnate • Frank H. Spearman
... said the woman curtseying. "Here, Tommy, come 'vor, and take off your hat to her Ladyship," and she pulled forward a frightened shrinking boy in a suit of corduroy, who had hidden himself behind her. "Look to mun, my Lady, he that was the most rompageous boy in Ashacombe, so quiet as a snail. And he can't spake, my ...
— The Drummer's Coat • J. W. Fortescue
... proceeds to the island of Lamary, the Lambri of Marco Polo; and by using the Italian term "the star transmontane," at once betrays the source of his plagiarism. His descriptions seem disguised extracts from Polo, with ridiculous exaggerations and additions; as of snail shells so large as to hold many persons. His account of the pretended varieties of the human race, as of nations of Hermaphrodites, and others equally ridiculous, which he places in separate islands of the Indian ocean, are ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... familiar of mollusks is the common snail, which may serve as a type of the "class" of mollusks to which it belongs—the class Gasteropoda. The snail, with the slug, are representatives of land-forms of mollusca, but the bulk of the class and of the whole sub-kingdom ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... up, and followed the chambermaid. Aye, there it was, slowly winding up the steep white road, on which it seemed to move at a snail's pace. ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... disappeared, lost among mountains and hills; this detached number had the wild country, the forbidding road, the December day to themselves. To get the guns and ammunition-wagons along proved a snail-and-tortoise business. Guns and escort fell farther ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston
... pretty wet, but still laughing, when he crawled out, like a snail from under his shell, and got upon his feet, clutching the tub to hurl it ...
— The Young Surveyor; - or Jack on the Prairies • J. T. Trowbridge
... spurning hamlets behind us, I suddenly called out, "Why, what asses we are! Why, it's She that is brave—she and the donkey. We are safe enough; we are artillery and plate-armour: and she stands up to us with matchwood and a snail! If you had grown old in a quiet valley, and people began firing cannon-balls as big as cabs at you in your seventieth year, wouldn't you jump—and she never moved an eyelid. Oh! we go very fast and very far, ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... is the greatest spectacular night the American knows. The noisy, good-natured crowds in the streets, the jostling, snail-moving crowds; the illuminated canvas-sheets in front of the newspaper offices; the blare of tin horns, the cries, the yells, the hoots and hurrahs; the petty street fights; the stalled surface cars; the swearing cabbies; the newsboys hawking their latest extras, men carrying ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... not before he had been down to scratch like a fowl among the dead leaves under the privet-hedge for grubs, who "kidded" themselves that they were going to be fine, flashing insects next summer. He also prospected a snail or two, and broke through their fortifications by hammering the same upon a stone. And, by some magic process that looked akin to the way in which some men divine water, he divined a worm out of seemingly bare earth. It was there, too, and it came up, not joyfully, but tugged, ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... 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. He was the ...
— The Radio Boys on the Mexican Border • Gerald Breckenridge
... full-breasted pigeon, with his head thrown back, and was continually in 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 there had been crowded half a dozen ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... can't wait your snail's pace. My lady in black, Mrs. Donald Bird, has been here all the afternoon, and she offers me twenty-five dollars a month to give up the Baer cubs and tell stories two hours a day in the orphan asylums and the Children's Hospital! Just what I love to do! Just what I always longed to do! Just ...
— Polly Oliver's Problem • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... blindly adventuring out into the open thoroughfare to avoid some obstacle—some spectral wain or omnibus got hopelessly stranded; while there were muffled cries and calls here, there, and everywhere. They went at a snail's pace, of course. Once, at a corner, the near wheels got on the pavement; the cab tilted over; Miss Burgoyne shrieked aloud and clung to her companion; then there was a heavy bump, and the venerable vehicle resumed its slow progress. Suddenly they beheld a cluster of dim, nebulous, phantom ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... the power of growth, In the snail and the tree, God is the power of growth In the ...
— Lundy's Lane and Other Poems • Duncan Campbell Scott
... trembled. Her car seemed to draw sullenly back. Then it came out—out—really out, which is the most joyous sensation any motorist shall ever know. In excitement over actually moving again, as fast as any healthy young snail, she drove on, on, the young man ahead grinning back at her. Nor did she stop, nor he, till both cars were safe on merely thick mud, a quarter of a ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... the sly creature's front feet were lame from the rheumatism, like Uncle Wiggily's, so the fox couldn't run at all. Bawly knew he could easily hop away from him, as the sly animal couldn't go any faster than a snail. ...
— Bully and Bawly No-Tail • Howard R. Garis
... Bayswater at a snail's pace, and with more stoppages than ever mortal omnibus was subjected to before, as it seemed to that one eager passenger. At last the fading foliage of the Park appeared between the hats and bonnets of Valentine's opposite neighbours. Even those orange tawny trees ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... 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 two or three attempts, got the latch in his mouth and opened it. ...
— The Skipper's Wooing, and The Brown Man's Servant • W. W. Jacobs
... liberated girls skipped down to the laundry was certainly not snail-like. They had nearly reached it when Ruth's feet became entangled in a piece of string, and, stooping down to loosen it, she discovered a slip of paper fastened to the end, and a large pin which had evidently stuck it fast to ...
— Caps and Capers - A Story of Boarding-School Life • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... 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 ...
— The Fight for the Argonne - Personal Experiences of a 'Y' Man • William Benjamin West
... left us, and we proceeded through the Gulf with the convoy. Nothing of any importance transpired during our passage of nine long, tedious weeks, when we anchored in the Downs, where I got rid of all our snail-sailing mahogany haystacks. The three days we lay in the Downs I took up my quarters at the "Hoop and Griffin." Bread and butter, with delicious oysters, were my orders of the day, but, alas, my former ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... folk, and the prince of darkness is behind them to urge them on. They sank little charges of powder into my legs and then they exploded them, which makes me a slower walker than ever, though I was never very brisk. 'The Snail' was what I was called at school in Tours, yes, and afterwards at the seminary I was always ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... There were cottagers in this lonely hill hamlet, not only old folk but young persons, who had never seen a train. They had not had the enterprise or curiosity to walk into Overboro' for the purpose. Some of the folk ate snails, the common brown shell-snail found in the hedges. It has been observed that children who eat snails are often remarkably plump. The method of cooking is to place the snail in its shell on the bar of a grate, like a chestnut. And well-educated people have been known, even in these days, to use the snail as ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies
... and says, "I wonder how Sir Samuel Luke and he should clash, for they are both cubs of the same ugly litter. This Urchin is as ill carved as that Goblin painted. The grandam bear sure had blistered her tongue, and so left him unlicked. He looks like a snail with his house upon his back, or the Spirit of the Militia with a natural snapsack, and may serve both for tinker and budget too. Nature intended him to play at bowls, and therefore clapt a bias upon him. ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... to fit the snail, as it were," commented the land baron, patronizingly, gazing around the little cupboard of a room. "At any rate," he added, in an effort to hide his dissatisfaction, "it's a pleasure to become better acquainted with such a—what shall ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... is this? The girl's fainting. Never mind. Here, landlady, bring a light! Lead the way. She's not too heavy to carry. Upstairs with you. What a snail you are, ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... the river, taking many beaver. As a New Year's greeting a shower of arrows from a new tribe, the Pipis, fell amongst them. The trappers killed six of them at one volley, and the rest ran away, leaving twenty-three beautiful longbows behind. The only clothing the dead men had on was snail-shells fastened to the ends of their long locks of hair. The trappers now began to seek more anxiously for the mythical settlements. "A great many times each day," says Pattie, "we bring our crafts to the shore ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... cheat head grain found how treat dead staid ground town beast stead waif hound growl bleat tread rail mound clown preach dread flail pound frown speak thread quail round crown streak sweat snail sound ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... example, among the plants we take the yeast-plant, a Protococcus, a common mould, a Chara, a fern, and some flowering plant; among animals we examine such things as an Amoeba, a Vorticella, and a fresh-water polyp. We dissect a starfish, an earthworm, a snail, a squid, and a fresh-water mussel. We examine a lobster and a crayfish, and a black beetle. We go on to a common skate, a codfish, a frog, a tortoise, a pigeon, and a rabbit, and that takes us about all the time we have to give. The purpose of ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... supply. Seeds planted. Beautiful country. Ride westward. A chopped log. Magnetic hill. Singular scenery. Snail-shells. Cheering prospect westward. A new chain of hills. A nearer mountain. Vistas of green. Gibson finds water. Turtle backs. Ornamented Troglodytes' caves. Water and emus. Beef-wood-trees. Grassy lawns. Gum creek. Purple vetch. Cold dewy night. Jumbled ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles |
