"Snake" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Wrinkled, white-haired, and toothless, he danced amidst great applause; and after him a tiny girl posed most picturesquely, throwing out her plump, dimpled wrists, on which twinkled innumerable bangles. Waving each wrist in turn, the little maid would fasten upon it a serious gaze, as if she were a snake-charmer and each arm was a serpent, her hand representing the head, which waved ever back and forth restlessly and in time to the ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... I, in a low voice, as the cause of my unhappiness rose up, gaunt, grim and forbidding, with thin lips curved in a mocking smile, and glittering, snake-like eyes fixed upon my face. I shivered faintly; and she, though looking quickly at me, seemed to think she had said enough about my unhappiness. Her ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... underneath him. There was no paddle, nor, in fact, anything except the spirit-tin that one could use as one, so I settled to drift until I was picked up. I held an inquest on him, brought in a verdict against some snake, scorpion, or centipede unknown, ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... sank as it came over the uneven ridges like a fiery snake; topped the nearest ridge and came pouring down past the churchyard wall. At its head danced Lizzie Pezzack, shrieking like a creature possessed, her hair loose and streaming while she whirled ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... carry them with us, Lew. We won't take any chances on death by snake-bite. These mountains are full of rattlers ...
— The Young Wireless Operator—As a Fire Patrol - The Story of a Young Wireless Amateur Who Made Good as a Fire Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... day early in April, as we were crossing over to superintend the building of our house, we were startled by a striped snake, with his little bright eyes, raising himself to look at us, and putting out his red, forked tongue. Now there is no more harm in these little garden-snakes than there is in a robin or a squirrel—they are poor little, peaceable, timid creatures, which ...
— Queer Little Folks • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Ascidia of the snake-plantain or Plantago lanceolata are narrow tubes, because the leaves are oblong or lanceolate, while those of the broad leaved species of arrowhead, as for instance, the Sagittaria japonica, are of ...
— Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation • Hugo DeVries
... the the mids of which diuision a burning brand sprang vp, casting from it a farre off coles and sparks, as it had beene of fire. The bodie of the moone in the meane time that was beneath, semed to wrest and writh in resemblance like to an adder or snake that had bene beaten, and anon after it came to the old state againe. This chanced aboue a dozzen times, and at length from horne to horne it ...
— Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (2 of 6): England (5 of 12) - Henrie the Second • Raphael Holinshed
... 21, current volume, you referred H. K., of Wis., who had described the horse-hair snake, to page 280, No. 18 current volume, for a reply, which you considered "sufficient." With your kind permission I would like to speak a few words about the "snakes" in question. When I resided in Pennsylvania, I, in company with many other lads, used to tie ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
... women with their gay clothes of various hues, lit up by the expiring gleams of the setting sum, winding their way along the garden paths, like some monster snake, with scales of many colors; their gait perfect, undulating, and undisturbed by the baskets poised gracefully on their heads; singing some quaint refrain in the usual minor key, or making the air gay with their chatter and laughter; which, if far distant, ...
— Tea Leaves • Francis Leggett & Co.
... inner marginal band of outline blocks alternating with snake-like figures, external marginal band of ...
— Illustrated Catalogue of the Collections Obtained from the Indians of New Mexico in 1880 • James Stevenson
... the cheerful, businesslike point of view of these two educated and apparently civilised young men as to the tragedies of life. He had shuddered at Kittredge's story of the man squeezed to death by the snake. Sewell's story, so graphically outlined, filled him with horror, made it a struggle for him to ...
— The Great God Success • John Graham (David Graham Phillips)
... light blue background is divided into four quadrants by a white cross; in the center of each rectangle is a white snake; the flag of France is used ...
— The 1997 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... expert in catching such venomous snakes as cobras and craits. They appeared not to possess the slightest dread of them, and would stealthily follow them to their burrows, then grasp the tail, and by a rapid movement of the other hand along the body to just below the head, grip the snake firmly at the neck and allow it to coil round their arm. During the construction of Fort Canning, later on, many were so caught and brought down to the jail for the reward. They were then destroyed, the convicts at the time always asking pardon of the snake for so betraying it to their ...
— Prisoners Their Own Warders - A Record of the Convict Prison at Singapore in the Straits - Settlements Established 1825 • J. F. A. McNair
... to speak of the Grand Model which was set up as a five-cent aristocracy by Lord Shaftesbury and the great philosopher John Locke. The canebrakes and swamps of the wild and snake-infested jungles of the wilderness were to be divided into vast estates, over which were proprietors with hereditary titles and ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye
... the white preachers told us to obey and would read the Bible (which we could not understand) and told us not to steal eggs. Most of the doctors used herbs from the woods and "Aunt Jane" and "Uncle Bob" were known for using "Samson's Snake Root," "Devil's shoe-string" for stomach troubles and "low-bud Myrtle" for fevers; that's good now, chile, if ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Florida Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... I begin to be myself again. Ever since I was a child I have feared nothing so much as horses and the chilly snake. Come along, the huge ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang
... repeated the word with a questioning accent—"fallen? Are you sure of that? The snake, in his way, may be quite as honest as the people who lived here before him, and not much more harmful. The farmer was a miser who robbed his mother, quarrelled with his brother, and starved his wife. What she lacked in food, she made up in drink, when she could. One of ...
— The Blue Flower, and Others • Henry van Dyke
... Barye's powerful water-colors of animals and a fine oil, of unusual size for this artist, of a tiger. One of the most striking of the water-colors shows a great snake swallowing an antelope, whose head is partly engulfed, and it is almost exactly the same as one of the bronzes from the Walters collection. Other gentlemen have contributed water-colors and oil-paintings ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, Jan-Mar, 1890 • Various
... is, his unrighteous thoughts. Why? Because God knows that vulgar thoughts make vulgar men, and evil thoughts make evil men. So boys, make a practice of chasing them out of your heads as you would drive a snake out ...
— Crayon and Character: Truth Made Clear Through Eye and Ear - Or, Ten-Minute Talks with Colored Chalks • B.J. Griswold
... after having confined Satan in a pit, were obliged to let him out again to bring on the sequel of the fable. He is then introduced into the garden of Eden in the shape of a snake, or a serpent, and in that shape he enters into familiar conversation with Eve, who is no ways surprised to hear a snake talk; and the issue of this tete-a-tate is, that he persuades her to eat an apple, and the eating of that apple ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... in shape to the green snake of the Coromandel Coast. Under surface throughout bright gamboge colour; upper surface throughout, excepting about a span or less of the back of the neck, bright ochraceous brown. The space above alluded ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... very polite,' said the fairy, displaying no sign of anger. 'Well, in return for your lack of courtesy I decree that for every word you utter a snake or a toad shall ...
— Old-Time Stories • Charles Perrault
... hunched behind the table. He was peering toward the open door. I saw in his hand a small, barrel-like weapon, with a wire dangling from it. The wire lay like a snake across the floor and terminated in a small metal cylinder in ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... instrument, when she felt something gliding up her sash, and saw her enemy making his way to kiss her cheek. She shrieked and threw herself backwards, and Gon, who had been curled up on a stool at her feet, understood her terror, and with one bound seized the snake by his neck. He gave him one bite and one shake, and flung him on the ground, where he lay, never to worry the princess any more. Then she took Gon in her arms, and praised and caressed him, and saw that he had the nicest bits to eat, and the softest mats to lie on; and he would have had nothing ...
— The Pink Fairy Book • Various
... great jars glow against the dark, Dark green, dusk red, and, like a coiling snake, Writhing eternally in smoky gyres, Great ropes of gorgeous vapor twist and turn Within them. So the Eastern fisherman Saw the swart genie rise when the lead seal, Scribbled with charms, was lifted from the jar; And — well, how went the tale? ...
— Young Adventure - A Book of Poems • Stephen Vincent Benet
... is too late, Nyonyoba," she murmured. "Yet I do not think I have been bitten—not by a snake, or I should have ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... Talmud, we have seen, was at that time the object of assaults of zealous Christians and disloyal Jews, and hostile works against Judaism were the order of the day. Most of them, however, like the fabulous snake, vented their poison and died. It was different with McCaul's poignant diatribe against the cause of Judaism and the honor of the Talmud, which had been translated into many languages. Montefiore, while in Russia, ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin
... Deuteronomy (chap. ii., verse 32), and Joshua (chap. xiii., verse 4). He claims that Cadmus and his wife Hermione were of this stock; and according to Ovid they were metamorphosed into snakes (Culebres). The name Hivites in Phoenician signifies a snake. ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... will-o'-the-wisp, a glitter in the cunning lights, she led him to a far end of the room where many cushions were, There she turned on him with a snake-like suddenness that was one ...
— Winds of the World • Talbot Mundy
... in nine Armenians, followed closely by one of the gipsies of Gregor Jhaere's party, who whispered to Maga through lips that hardly moved, and made signals to Kagig with a secretive hand like a snake's head. I got off Fred's stomach then, and when he had had his revenge by emptying hot pipe ashes down my neck he sat close beside me and translated what followed word for word. It was all in Armenian, spoken in deadly earnest by hairy men on edge with anxiety and yet compelled to grudging ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... that they themselves had contributed to this hated splendor by trading tickets to Tom for the wealth he had amassed in selling whitewashing privileges. These despised themselves, as being the dupes of a wily fraud, a guileful snake in the grass. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... him to tears. He saw that they valued Justin and Pietro Stanislaws for what could be got out of them: invitations, dinners, financial "tips," tours en automobile; and there was no reward for which Peter cared. "Our houses were practically hotels," he said to me, "and our hearts were utilized as snake hospitals. I might as well have been a chauffeur for all the choice of guests or destination I had when I drove my father's friends in our cars. I never did anything I wanted to do, and I never got any gratitude for doing what they wanted me to do. I ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... the Journey. The Departure. Indians on Horseback. Scenes of Enchantment. Attractive Character of La Salle. Visit to the Kironas. The Bite of the Snake. Adventures Wild and Perilous. Hardihood of the Indian Hunter. The Long Sickness. A Man Devoured by ...
— The Adventures of the Chevalier De La Salle and His Companions, in Their Explorations of the Prairies, Forests, Lakes, and Rivers, of the New World, and Their Interviews with the Savage Tribes, Two Hu • John S. C. Abbott
... the fronds of a giant fern; a cautious step beyond his hands touched a slippery, pliant vine. And his whisper ended as he felt the thing turn and twist beneath his hand. It was alive!—writhing!—cold as the body of a monster snake, and just as vicious and savage in the way that it whipped down and about him in the gloom of the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various
... art worth learning. In passing across the continent I have found it as if a guide had prepared that way before us. The natural history of a region may thus be read without resorting to a book. Count the fauna: Eagle River, Bald Eagle, Buffalo Lake, Great Bear Lake, Salmon Falls, Snake River, Wolf Creek, White Fish River, Leech Lake, Beaver Bay, Carp River, Pigeon Falls, Elkhorn, Wolverine, Crane Hill, Rabbit Butte, Owl, Rattlesnake, Curlew, Little Crow, Mullet Lake, Clam Lake, Turtle ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... exemption, as Ireland. The countrey people retaine a conceite, that the Snakes, by their breathing about a hazell wand, doe make a stone ring of blew colour, in which there appeareth the yellow figure of a Snake, & that beasts which are stung, being giuen to drink of the water wherein this stone hath bene socked, will therethrough recouer. There was such a one bestowed on me, and the giuer auowed to haue seene a part of the stick sticking in it: but ...
— The Survey of Cornwall • Richard Carew
... on the rock which crusted Beacon Hill raised his head with a snake-like motion, and then let it fall back again upon his folded arms. His body had not moved; it seemed part of the ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... twelve of Sir Samuel Romilly's voters were assembled waiting to poll, and with the assistance of two or three more of his gang, backed on by Captain Gee, he would hustle and drive them all out of the box, and prevent them from giving their votes. At length, Sir Samuel was induced to snake a serious remonstrance to the Sheriff against such an unwarrantable violation of the freedom of election, and he called upon the Sheriff to have Watson taken into custody, who had actually been assaulting several of ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... when she was only sixteen, that he might sell her in the white slave market. The keeper of the resort, convinced that she was under age, had refused to deal with him. When I began to question the snake, it hissed, "Mind your own business." I replied that this was my business, and asked the detectives to investigate. Discerning quickly what it was that we had discovered, they promptly locked the thing in an iron cage, like any other wild beast. The girl was cared for. Her ...
— Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls - War on the White Slave Trade • Various
... the miraculous. If some one should tell me that a stick had been transformed into a snake by a miracle, naturally I should not believe it; but if I should be asked whether there was not something miraculous in the very existence of a stick or of a snake, I should be constrained to acknowledge ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja
... the heavy breathing of a man came to the ears of the waiters. It was the sweep of naked feet over the pebbly, sandy bottom of the pass, the cautious movement of bodies through the air, sounds growing plainer until they resembled the rustling of grass through which a snake is gliding. To Hugh the intense moments seemed like hours. Would they never come to view? Would the ambush succeed? Why were they so slow? He could have gone ten miles while they were covering the scant mile, he swore in ...
— Nedra • George Barr McCutcheon
... lie on hard, cold wood or stone, Iron, and ache in every bone; They hate the night: they see no eyes Of loved ones in the starlit skies. They see the cold, dark water near; They dare not take long looks for fear They'll fall like those poor birds that see A snake's eyes staring at their tree. Some of them laugh, half-mad; and some All through the chilly night are dumb; Like poor, weak infants some converse, And cough like giants, ...
— Foliage • William H. Davies
... influence of a vast crowd pouring over him, buoying him up. There were balconies, galleries, great archways giving remoter perspectives, and everywhere people, a vast arena of people, densely packed and cheering. Across the nearer space lay the collapsed cable like a huge snake. It had been cut by the men of the flying machine at its upper end, and had crumpled down into the hall. Men seemed to be hauling this out of the way. But the whole effect was vague, the very buildings throbbed and leapt with the roar of ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... everything, and as a matter of fact there was not much that they had not seen. Altogether, his person was a perfect model of aristocratic outline, slim and slender, supple and agreeable. He seemed as if he could be pliant or rigid at will, and twist and bend, or rear his head like a snake. ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... breath, And they promise us love-inspired life—by the red road of hatred and death. The gods, dethroned and deceased, cast forth—so the chatterers say— Are banished with Flora and Pan, and behold our new Queen of the May! New Queen, fresh crowned in the city, flower-drest, her snake-sceptre a rod, Her orb a decked dynamite bomb, which shall shatter all earth at her nod; But for us their newest device seems barren, and did they but dare To bare the new Queen of the May, were she angel ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 30, 1892 • Various
... eject me from my seat. As usual, I had purchased a first-class ticket, and paid the required sum for it, and on the requirement of the conductor to leave, refused to do so, when he called on these men "to snake me out." They attempted to obey with an air which plainly told me they relished the job. They, however, found me much attached to my seat, and in removing me tore away two or three of the surrounding ones, on which I held with ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... age begins anew, The golden years return, The earth doth like a snake renew Her winter weeds outworn; Heaven smiles, and faiths and empires gleam, Like wrecks of a dissolving dream. . . . . . . . . . "Another Athens shall arise, And to remoter time Bequeath, like sunset to the skies, The splendor of its prime; And leave, if nought ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... creature, Sir, take to a sport better; he just dashed in among them, from one to another, he would catch a snake by the neck and give it a shake, and throw it down and rush at another; poor fellow, it was his last day's sport, he died almost as soon as it was over; he must have received a great many bites. The place is known as the rattlesnakes' ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... world which had never been fairly involved in the general motion, and were the more amusing for their torpor. After passing the winter with King in the West Indies, he passed the summer with Hay in the Yellowstone, and found there little to study. The Geysers were an old story; the Snake River posed no vital statistics except in its fordings; even the Tetons were as calm as they were lovely; while the wapiti and bear, innocent of strikes and corners, laid no traps. In return the party treated them with affection. Never did a band less bloody or bloodthirsty wander over ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... (by Crawford H. Toy) Theogony Adapa and the Southwind Revolt of Tiamat Penitential Psalms Descent to the Underworld Inscription of Sennacherib The Flood Invocation to the Goddess Beltis The Eagle and the Snake Oracles of Ishtar of Arbela The Flight of Etana An Erechite's ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... the burnt grass and began to dig; we all began to dig. While I used the pick, the others shovelled vigorously. No one spoke. Colonel Wragge worked the hardest of the three. The soil was light and sandy, and there were only a few snake-like roots and occasional loose stones to delay us. The pick made short work of these. And meanwhile the darkness settled about us and the biting wind swept roaring through ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... the cards as well, and try and sell them. He looked all the rattle-snake, but eventually embraced Gerard in the Italian fashion, and took them, after first drying the last-finished ones in the sun, which was now ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... the stern and prosy record of applied science, it becomes us not to report the chatterings of these two till they reached the base of the vast brick chimney, towering nearly eighty feet into the air above them. Its long shadow lay like a stiffened snake upon the fields, ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... comfort for us who must die, what comfort for us who have seen others die, if death be but a new birth into some higher life; if all that it changes in us is our body—the mere husk and shell of us—such a change as comes over the snake when he casts his old skin, and comes out fresh and gay, or even the crawling caterpillar, which breaks its prison, and spreads its wings to the sun as a fair butterfly? Where is the sting of death then, if death can sting, and poison, ...
— Out of the Deep - Words for the Sorrowful • Charles Kingsley
... lived long, and watched out many days, And am well sick of watching. Three days since, I had gone out upon the slopes for herbs, Snake-root, and subtle gums; and when the light Fell slantwise through the upper glens, and missed The sunk ravines, I came where all the hills Circle the valley of Gargaphian streams. Reach beyond reach all down the valley gleamed,— Thick branches ringed them. Scarce a ...
— In Divers Tones • Charles G. D. Roberts
... granting the horse-thief permission to attend the races. Sight of Lucy's fair, sweet face might inflame this Cordts—this Kentuckian who had boasted of his love of horses and women. Behind Cordts hung the little dust-colored Sears, like a coiled snake, ready to strike. Bostil felt stir in him a long-dormant fire—a stealing along his veins, ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... there was no occasion to warn the half-caste, in whom the instincts of his mother's people were paramount. Yarra was a child of the Bush; nothing would escape his eye or his ear, and at the same time he would be as swift and as secret as a snake. ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... the purple cushions, her figure so supple in its lines, it made him think of a snake. She half closed her eyes again—and she spoke low ...
— Three Weeks • Elinor Glyn
... us, or, to be more exact, has permitted us to wrest from the Indian and from creeping snake and prowling beast, a goodly land. Here we raise a product that supplies a need of the world that cannot be so acceptably filled up to the present time by any other ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... last they reached a lake, winding like a snake among towering hills, and with a huge baronial castle standing out upon the rocky shore. This imitation fortress ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... triumphs were completely eclipsed, I soon learned, by the capture, alive, on this last expedition, of an abominably poisonous snake, known to those who knew it as the Blue Dryad, or more familiarly in backwoods slang, as the Half-hour Striker, in vague reference to its malignant and fatal qualities. The time in which a snake-bite takes effect is, by the way, no very exact test of its virulence, ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... low ebb. Only two clergymen accepted my offer to come and help hoe my potatoes for the privilege of using my vegetable total-depravity figure about the snake-grass, or quack-grass as some call it; and those two did not bring hoes. There seems to be a lack of disposition to hoe among our educated clergy. I am bound to say that these two, however, sat and watched my vigorous combats with the weeds, and talked ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... are times when it has the true epic touch—or at least as much of it as is possible in an age of detail and elaboration; there are times when it has a touch of the pathetic—when in homeliness of phrase and triviality of rhythm it is hardly to be surpassed; and there are times, as in The Snake Charmer when, as in certain pages in the work of Richard Wagner, it is so studiously laboured and so heavily charged with ornament and colour as to be almost pedantic in infelicity, almost repellent by sheer force of superfluous and elaborate suggestiveness. Last of all, in ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... followed—so it seemed to me—by half the population of the neighborhood. As these companies drew nearer, I gradually distinguished outbursts of distant shouting. I had arrived at the psychological moment. Far off, along watercourses lately dry, a streak of light was advancing like the coils of a silver snake. This was the river, which was actually coming down in flood. Presently, with a rattle of pebbles, it was pouring by below me. In less than an hour the portent died away, but left the memory of a new miracle ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... hours. Q. What is the cause of their thus sitting so dull and inactive? A. The great quantity of food they have eaten. Q. Is there any description of vulture forming an exception to the general character of those birds? A. Yes, that particular kind called the snake eater. Q. Where is this bird a native of? A. Of Africa. Q. Why is it called the snake eater? A. On account of its singular manner of destroying serpents, on which it feeds. Q. Describe the manner ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... I answered. "At least he was inside a snake but now I hope he is waiting upon his master ...
— The Ancient Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... and tobacco, his pipe being seldom from his mouth; besides which, he has always his do-little sword by his side, made by themselves of such iron as they get from the Europeans; his bow also, and quiver full of poisoned arrows, pointed with iron like a snake's-tongue, or else a case of javelins or darts, having iron heads of good breadth and made ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... feet hung over the river—scarce less defined in its margin than the river itself, for it winded wherever the stream winded, and ran straight as an arrow wherever the stream ran straight—occupied the whole length of the valley, like an enormous snake lying uncoiled in its den. The numerous turf cottages on either side were invisible in the darkness, save that ever and anon the brief twinkle of a light indicated their existence and their places. In a recess of the ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... from a distance; upon these hills were vineyards, and the wine that came therefrom is very famous wine, as your uncle, if he be a club man, will very truly assure you. There was a pretty little river that curled like a silver snake through the fertile meadows, and lost its way among the hills, and there were many tiny brooks that scampered across lots and got tangled up with that pretty little river in most bewildering fashion. ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field
... and the nether one quivered incessantly, as did the smaller facial muscles near the mouth. His eyes were sunken and surrounded by livid circles, but they themselves seemed consuming with the dry and thirsty fire of fever: hot, red, staring, they glided ever to and fro with a snake-like motion, as uncertain, wild, and painful, in their unresting search, as those of a wounded and captive hawk. The same restlessness, approaching in violence the ceaseless spasmodic habit of a confirmed Chorea, betrayed itself in all his movements, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... reached the Snake River deserts, great sandy plains stretched out before them. Only occasionally were there intervales of grass, and the miserable herbage was saltweed, resembling pennyroyal. The desponding party looked in vain for some relief from ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... attracted her attention. "I wonder if that is a bird or a squirrel," said she to herself. "If I can catch it, how glad I shall be!" 15. She tried to make her way quietly through the underbrush; but what was her terror when she saw it large snake coiled up before her, prepared for a spring! 16. She was so much frightened that she could not move; but brave Rover saw the snake, and, springing forward, seized it by the neck and killed it. 17. When the faithful dog came and rubbed his head against her ...
— McGuffey's Third Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... the second act, Lady Jenkins says to me, "Parker, has an emerald snake bracelet with a ruby head been found in any of the rooms?" and I have to say, "I will inquire, my lady." And then I move about the room, putting things in order. She says, "That will ...
— Love's Shadow • Ada Leverson
... quickly as he came, he disappeared from sight. He was soon back, carrying in his beak a cactus burr, which he placed on the ground near the sleeping snake. Back and forth he went, each time returning with a prickly burr. Before long he had a hedge entirely surrounding poor, unsuspecting Mr. Snake. Then one more burr was brought and quietly dropped on the ...
— Little Tales of The Desert • Ethel Twycross Foster
... My louely Aaron, Wherefore look'st thou sad, When euery thing doth make a Gleefull boast? The Birds chaunt melody on euery bush, The Snake lies rolled in the chearefull Sunne, The greene leaues quiuer, with the cooling winde, And make a cheker'd shadow on the ground: Vnder their sweete shade, Aaron let vs sit, And whil'st the babling Eccho mock's the Hounds, ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... eyes a pig's, little, cunning, and predaceous; the complexion sallow and pimply from unholy living, with an incongruous over-layer of sunburn. A type to inspire distrust, one would think, at sight; a nature as repellant as a snake's, and ten times as deadly; in every line and lineament, in every move and gesture, ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... tiger among men surrounded by his counsellors,—sighing on his car like a snake turned back, showered arrows endued with the speed and force of thunderbolts. Beholding all this, venerable sire, my thighs began to quake. Then that celestial youth pierced with arrows the Kuru army consisting of leonine warriors. And having pierced and afflicted that crowd of cars, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... University (1633-4) to be much beautified in buildings, every college either casting its skin with the snake, or renewing its bill with the eagle, having their courts or at least their fronts and Gatehouses repaired and adorned. But the greatest alteration was in their Chapels, most of them being graced with the accession of organs. And seeing musick ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... and an orphan. She was seven now, and the pattern child of the county. Pretty, too, with a fair skin and shiny braids of golden hair, and innocent blue eyes, and dimpled arms, and fluffy, kittenish ways, while I was as lean as a snake, as brown as a chinquapin, and as wild as a hawk. I was used to hearing myself compared to all three. Mary 'Liza could read in the New Testament without stopping to spell a word, at three, and write in a copy-book at five, and do sums ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... which sting one's hands severely and remain rankling in the flesh. Another filled his mouth with live coals from a brazier, and walked around blowing out sparks. Another swallowed a living scorpion, a small snake, broken glass and nails. The spectator was in the midst of these enthusiasts, being touched by them in their antics, yet he could detect no foul play, except that he imagined the sword in the first-named experiment to have been driven into ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... and Resurrection, or Re-Birth, of all things in Nature, this cycle depending upon the activities of an entity at first vaguely conceived of as the 'Luck of the Year,' the Eniautos Daimon. This Being, at one stage of evolution theriomorphic—he might assume the form of a bull, a goat, or a snake (the latter, probably from the close connection of the reptile with the earth, being the more general form)—only gradually, and by distinctly traceable stages, assumed an anthropomorphic shape.[3] This gives to the study of Greek antiquity a special ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston
... hot in the extremities, and that a cold wave was going up his leg. Ma asked him where the cold wave was, and he told her, and she thought she would rub it, but she began to yell the same kind of murder Pa did, and she said a snake had gone up her sleeve. Then I thought it was time to stop the circus, and I reached up Ma's lace sleeve and caught the frog by the leg and pulled it out, and told Pa I guessed he had taken my frog to bed with him, and I showed it to him, and then he said I did it, and he ...
— The Grocery Man And Peck's Bad Boy - Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa, No. 2 - 1883 • George W. Peck
... omission of mine or commission of your printer. If you have patience, look it over. Do you know any body who can stop—I mean point—commas, and so forth? for I am, I hear, a sad hand at your punctuation. I have, but with some difficulty, not added any more to this snake of a poem, which has been lengthening its rattles every month. It is now fearfully long, being more than a Canto and a half of Childe Harold, which contains but 882 lines per book, with all ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... first resting place for a few hours at night was Granite Canyon, twenty miles west of Cheyenne, and just at the foot of the pass over the Black Hills. On the 18th, night-fall found them entering St. Mary's, at the further end of the pass between Rattle Snake Hills and Elk Mountain. It was after 5 o'clock and already dark on the 19th, when the travellers, hurrying with all speed through the gloomy gorge of slate formation leading to the banks of the Green River, found the ford too ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... played upon strange instruments which made uncanny noises of a sort to make one's flesh creep. One of these instruments was a pipe, and to its music the girls went through a performance which represented snake charming. It seemed a doubtful sort of music to charm anything with, but a native gentleman assured me that snakes like it and will come out of their holes and listen to it with every evidence of refreshment And gratitude. He said that at an entertainment in his grounds once, the pipe brought ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Toni, you needn't repulse me as if I were a snake. You are a child, after all, and a jolly bad-tempered one at that!" It was the first time he had ever used such a tone, and the girl's anger ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... climate is such that over large areas of Russia the Russian peasant is accustomed, and has been accustomed for hundreds of years, to perform prodigies of labor during two short periods of sowing and harvest, and to spend the immensely long and monotonous winter in a hibernation like that of the snake or the dormouse. There is a much greater difference between a Russian workman's normal output and that of which he is capable for a short time if he sets himself to it, than there is between the normal and exceptional output of an Englishman, whose temperate climate has not taught him to regard a ...
— The Crisis in Russia - 1920 • Arthur Ransome
... and black heron: the ducks, widgeon and teal; and ostriches to the southward, and of the dunghill-fowls. Of their cattle, horses, etc. Leopards and tigers. Of their serpents; the rattlesnake, small green snake. Amphisbaena, small black and small grey snake; the great land-, and the great watersnake; and of the water-dog. Of their sea-fish and turtle; ...
— A Voyage to New Holland • William Dampier
... Please. I reckon that's what she used to say to him, coaxin' like, and he kep' it up on her. Well, we was becalmed three days right out on the lake, and I had to row the blessed dingy in the bilin' sun over to Snake Island to get bread ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... maneuver to get within gunshot unseen, unheard. He stole from tree to tree, and muffled his footsteps in the long grass so adroitly that, just as he was going to pull the trigger, he stepped light as a feather on a venomous snake. It bit; he died. ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... "Harlan must 'a' got 'em drunk. An' that's three times I've missed that snake. Wish it would stop raining so ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... that there isn't a snake anywhere in that clump of brush," Tom proposed, and forthwith stepped into the thicket, beating about lustily ...
— The Young Engineers in Nevada • H. Irving Hancock
... direction—and that he wouldn't be goin' to the Joyces' place to-night at all; what 'ud bring him there, and it gettin' so late? But of course he went there, as surely as a swimming bubble goes over the cataract's smooth lip, or a fascinated little bird down the snake's throat. ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... goes on licking himself and meets a beetle; he crushes the beetle with his paw . . . and so he spoils and destroys everything on his way. . . . He creeps into other beasts' holes, tears up the anthills, cracks the snail's shell. If he meets a rat, he fights with it; if he meets a snake or a mouse, he must strangle it; and so the whole day long. Come, tell me: what is the use of a beast like ...
— The Duel and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... loyal life Pete remembered, and remembering, felt a creeping on his skin, that this brother of his, who had grown harsh and jealous and suspicious, had been a murderer. The cold, unkindly memory slid along his senses like a snake. On the edge of the sloping road-bank, studded with little yellow flowers, just where the trees stopped, Pete set down his load and waited, instinctively bracing his body, drawing it back beneath the shelter of one ...
— Snow-Blind • Katharine Newlin Burt
... once. I trust You will find excuse to "snake Three days' casual on the bust." Get your fun for old ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... of the sweet Voice died away, the fiery snake climbed into the heart of the cloud. Now the cloud rolled from the horns of light, and was gathered into the blackness. The vision of the crescent moon grew dim and vanished. Then, as the Goddess passed, once more ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... neck had grown so long and spare That her head was more than her neck could bear— And it bent to the ground, like a willow tree, And brought down the head of this proud Phoebe, Until whenever she went out a walk to take, The boys would shout, "Here comes a snake!" ...
— Slovenly Betsy • Heinrich Hoffman
... door-step neighbors which bore my industrious wasps company in their arena of one square yard. To the left, surrounding a grass stem, will be seen an object which is unpleasantly familiar to most country folks—that salivary mass variously known by the libellous names of "snake-spit," "cow-spit," "cuckoo-spit," "toad-spit," and "sheep-spit," or the inelegant though expressive substitute of "gobs." The foam-bath pavilion of the "spume-bearer," with his glittering, bubbly domicile ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... to her and said, "Fair maiden, shed a shift!" The shepherd's daughter answered him, "Prince Lindworm, slough a skin!"—"No one has ever dared tell me to do that before!" said he.—"But I command you to do it now!" said she. Then he began to moan and wriggle: and in a few minutes a long snake-skin lay upon the floor beside him. The girl drew off her first shift, and spread it on top ...
— East of the Sun and West of the Moon - Old Tales from the North • Peter Christen Asbjornsen
... circumstances, I might have hesitated, but my position was a desperate one, and I accepted. The next day, armed to the teeth, we started. We were eight when we started. When we reached San Francisco only five of us were left. One was killed by the bite of a snake, and the rest fell down the precipices of the Rocky Mountains. At that time none of the comforts and luxuries to be found there to-day existed. We worked with pick and axe, and stilled our hunger with the wild animals we killed. Two weeks later trouble arose ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume I (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere |
