"Adder" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to blow into the barrel with such fury, that had there been an ounce of wadding left, the blast would have blown it all through the enormous touch-hole. Being well assured after this that neither an adder nor a slow-worm had taken up his domicile within the barrel, he began to load. One charge—two charges—then a third, "as a compliment," and after this, a fourth, "for good luck." On this infernal charge—imperial, as he called it—this ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... coiled adder, one slays it. One does not say, 'Bide alive, because I saw you too soon to be harmed by you.' Mercy to the beast that might be, but not to the child who shall some day ...
— A King's Comrade - A Story of Old Hereford • Charles Whistler
... Francesco choose him, at the age of thirteen, to be the leader of the body of three thousand men which were to join in the Crusade preached by Pope Pius II. On the 2nd of June, 1464, the ducal standard, bearing the golden lion of the house of Sforza and the adder of the Visconti, was solemnly committed to the charge of the young Crusader, before the eyes of the whole court, on the piazza in front of the old palace, which was gaily decorated for the occasion with garlands and tapestries. But the Pope died, and the idea of the Crusade ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright
... or by Him who made The world, thy heart's blood dyes my blade!"— "Thy threats, thy mercy, I defy! Let recreant yield, who fears to die." —Like adder darting from his coil, Like wolf that dashes through the toil, Like mountain-cat who guards her young, Full at Fitz-James's throat he sprung; Received, but recked not of a wound, And locked his arms his foeman round.— Now, gallant Saxon, hold thine own! No maiden's ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... used to be promptly ducked in horse-ponds in the unregenerate days; but the scold was an individual who was usually chastised for making a dead-set at her husband alone. The real shrew is like the puff-adder or the whip-snake—she tries to bite impartially all round; and she is often able to bite in comparative silence, but with a most deadly effect. The vulgar shrieker is a deplorable source of mischief, ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... large picnic party, at which I assisted, was thrown into while lunching in the garden of a villa, almost in the town of Rio, by a lady jumping up from her seat with a deadly whip-snake hanging on her dress. I once myself sat on an adder who put his fangs through the woollen stuff of my inexpressibles and could not escape. The same thing happened with the lady's dress; in that case also we caught the snake, as it could not disentangle ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... marry thy great-grandfather's widow." She, poor thing! at that time was thinking little of marriage; for even then, though known only to herself and her femme de chambre, that dreadful organic malady (cancer) was raising its adder's crest, under which finally she died. But, in spite of languor interchanging continually with disfiguring anguish, she still impressed one as a regal beauty. Her person, indeed, and figure, would have tended towards such a standard; but all was counteracted, and thrown back into ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... may be cited. Two favourite Irish terriers, in violation of an all-precautionary training, molested a death adder, the emulation of each inciting the other to recklessness. When the fray was over and the wicked little serpent lay squirming in death, both dogs took joyful credit on account of the feat. An hour after one began to froth at ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... Eloise," Alexander said in a low voice. "Watch out for her. She's as deadly as a puff adder and she collects men. The other man is Douglas's father, Henry. The plump redhead beside him is his wife, Anne. The other woman is my mother, Clara, even though Eloise and I don't look like her. We ...
— The Lani People • J. F. Bone
... his mustache, muttering, "A good deal of ceremony to-night about crushing an adder." Athos shrunk into his corner, pale and motionless as ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... or you'll have a fit of the mother [hysterics]. Nobody wants to send the lad amongst snakes—I don't know that there's so much as an adder there. As to devils, he'll find them where'er he goeth, and some of them in men's and women's bodies, ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... sometimes proved fatal to children who have mistaken them for sorrel. The brilliant scarlet coral-like berries which are found set closely about the erect spike of the arum in the autumn [35] are known to country lads as adder's meat—a name corrupted from the Anglo-Saxon attor, "poison," as originally applied to these berries, though it is remarkable that pheasants can eat them ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... care not to be deluded that, though he sat by to see fair play, yet it was always with his elbows on the table and his fingers in his ears, regardless of appearing to the priest in the character of the deaf adder. After all, he was not the object, and good Pere Bonami at first thought the day his own, when he found that almost all his arguments against Calvinism were equally impressed upon Berenger's mind, but the differences soon revealed themselves; ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Star-Child was glad and ran back to his playmates. But when they saw him coming they ran away from him in fear. He went to the well and looked in. Lo, his face was as the face of a toad and his body was scaled like an adder. He flung himself down on the ...
— Tell Me Another Story - The Book of Story Programs • Carolyn Sherwin Bailey
... Courthope does not condescend to italicize his pun; but a swallow-tailed and adder-tongued pun like this must be paused upon. Compare Mr. Murray's Tale of the Town of Lucca, to be seen between the arrival of one train and the departure of the next,—nothing there but twelve churches and a cathedral,—mostly of ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... altered for the worse in most cases; that their means of subsistence are gradually more and more limited, and their numbers rapidly diminished: in short, in the simplicity of their hearts, they take the frozen adder in their bosom, and it stings them to death. They look for a benefit or blessing from European intercourse, and it becomes ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... tarry long at the wine; they that go to seek mixed wine. 31. Look not thou upon the wine when it is red, when it giveth his colour in the cup, when it moveth itself aright. 32. At the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder. 33. Thine eyes shall behold strange women, and thine heart shall utter perverse things. 34. Yea, thou shalt be as he that lieth down in the midst of the sea, or as he that lieth upon the top of a mast. 35. They have stricken me, shalt thou say, and I ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... the girl had never been deep; and, the moment she fancied she and her son were drawing toward each other, she became to her the thawed adder: she wished the adder well, but was she bound to harbor it after it had begun to bite? There are who never learn to see anything except in its relation to themselves, nor that relation except as fancied by ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... close up against the right hand corner of the room, there sat the Pasha, his limbs gathered in, the whole creature coiled up like an adder. His cheeks were deadly pale, and his lips perhaps had turned white, for without moving a muscle the man impressed me with an immense idea of the wrath within him. He kept his eyes inexorably fixed ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... nostrils of his big three-angled nose dilated, the scream of an eagle rang in his voice, his huge ugly hand held the crook of his cane with the clutch of a tiger, his tongue flew with the hiss of an adder, and his big deformed foot seemed to grip the floor as ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... or become torpid when the temperature falls below a certain point. The rapidity of all their vital actions will depend upon the state of the thermometer; they digest faster in the heat of summer than in the milder warmth of spring. Their secretions (as the poison of the adder) are in hot weather more copious, and in winter are not formed at all. The reptiles breathe, in all cases, by lungs; but we must except here those called Batrachians, as frogs or newts, which breathe, in the first stage, by gills, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... every one of them an adder, Alfred turned on her furiously, and his long arm shot out of its own accord, and the fingers opened like an eagle's claw. She saw, and understood, but never blenched. Her vindictive eye met ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... and pride Pope Alexander the Third practiced when, by threatening against him his empty ban, he compelled the pious and mighty German emperor, Frederick Barbarossa, to prostrate himself at his feet while he stepped upon him and said, Thou shalt tread upon the lion and adder; and when the emperor protested against such shameful pride and said, Non tibi, sed Petro (Not to thee, but to Peter), the Pope, with increasing scorn, replied, "Et mihi, et Petro" (Both to me, and to Peter). This is pride carried ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther
... his beer, and conversed freely with his acquaintance. By his arch replies I found that I was in company with an original—a man that might stretch forth his arms in the wilderness without fear, and like Paul, grasp an adder without harm. He playfully entwined his fingers with their coils and curled crests, and played with their forked tongues. He had unbuttoned his waistcoat, and as cleverly as a fish-woman handles her eels, let out several snakes and adders, ...
— The Miracle Mongers, an Expos • Harry Houdini
... Ferns: Christmas and Holly Fern Marsh Fern Tribe The Beech Ferns The Fragrant Fern The Wood Ferns The Bladder Ferns The Woodsias The Boulder Fern (Dennstaedtia) Sensitive and Ostrich Ferns The Flowering Ferns (Osmunda) Curly Grass and Climbing Fern Adder's Tongue The Grape Ferns: Key to the Grape Fern Moonwort Little Grape Fern Lance-leaved Grape Fern Matricary Fern Common Grape Fern Rattlesnake Fern Filmy Fern Noted Fern Authors Fern Literature Time List for ...
— The Fern Lover's Companion - A Guide for the Northeastern States and Canada • George Henry Tilton
... taste not, handle not: Drink will make the dark, dark blot, Like an adder it will sting, And at last to ruin bring, They who tarry at ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation
... answer, "Belike, Theudas, thou art the ass of the proverb, that heard but heeded not the harp; or rather the adder that stoppeth her ears, that she may not hear the voice of the charmers. Well, therefore, spake the prophet concerning thee, If the Ethiopian can change his skin, or the leopard his spots, then mayest thou also do good, that hast been taught to do evil. Thou ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus
... scoff of God. Then the king was wroth, and said Raud should die the worst of deaths. And the king ordered him to be bound to a beam of wood, with his face uppermost, and a round pin of wood set between his teeth to force his mouth open. Then the king ordered an adder to be stuck into the mouth of him; but the serpent would not go into his mouth, but shrunk back when Raud breathed against it. Now the king ordered a hollow branch of an angelica root to be stuck into Raud's mouth; others say the king put his horn into his mouth, and forced the ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... languorous dreams. She haunted the mind, though she passed from the sight. When Roger Montrose sought his pillow that night, 'Twas to dream of La Travers. He thought she became A burning red rose, with each leaf like a flame. He stooped down and plucked it, and woke with a start, As it turned to an adder and ...
— Three Women • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... sooty than the night. The ground o'ergrown with weeds and bushy shrubs, Where milky hedgehogs nurse their prickly cubs: And here and there a mandrake grows, that strikes The hearers dead with their loud fatal shrieks; Under whose spreading leaves the ugly toad, The adder, and the snake, make their abode. Here dwelt Orandra; so the witch was hight, And hither had she toiled him by a sleight: She knew Anaxus was to go to court, And, envying virtue, she made it her sport To hinder him, sending her airy spies Forth ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... they were captured. Atle had the heart cut out of Hogne alive. This was his death. Gunnar he threw into a den of snakes, but a harp was secretly brought to him, and he played the harp with his toes (for his hands were fettered), so that all the snakes fell asleep excepting the adder, which rushed at him and bit him in the breast, and then thrust its head into the wound and clung to his liver until he died. Gunnar and Hogne are called Niflungs (Niblungs) and Gjukungs. Hence gold is called the Niflung treasure or inheritance. A little ...
— The Younger Edda - Also called Snorre's Edda, or The Prose Edda • Snorre
... which he prepared from the venom of a kind of swamp adder," she answered. "It produces madness, but not ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... that already, several times, or rather its contents have. You know what the Bible says, 'Biteth liek a serpent and stingeth like an adder?' Ah, here it is. But gloomy forebodings seize me: it is suspiciously light. Paradoxically, its lightness induces gravity in me. But that pun is entirely too fine-drawn for ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... do not touch that cup that is offered to you by the harlot world, spiced and fragrant and foaming; 'at the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder.' But take the pure joys which the Christ, loved, trusted, obeyed, summoned to your feast and welcomed in your heart, will bring to you; and these shall grow and greaten until the perfection of ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... lie anywhere near a flat stone," exclaimed Sylvia, "or an adder may come out, and that isn't a ...
— Betty Vivian - A Story of Haddo Court School • L. T. Meade
... and her heart was filled with shame and rage, and her lips with bitter venom; and her eyes became so terrible that whosoever looks on them is turned to stone; and her children are the winged horse and the giant of the golden sword; and her grandchildren are Echidna the witch-adder, and Geryon the three-headed tyrant, who feeds his herds beside the herds of hell. So she became the sister of the Gorgons, Stheino and Euryte the abhorred, the daughters of the Queen of the Sea. Touch them not, for they are immortal; but bring me ...
— The Heroes • Charles Kingsley
... shot!" he ejaculated. "What an extraordinary experience! Will you believe me, Doctor, when I tell you that as I drew this penknife out of my waistcoat pocket it actually seemed to change into an adder in my hand? There was the flat, wicked-looking head, the malevolent eyes, the characteristic markings of the body, and, above all, there was the feeling of it writhing strongly in my grasp, as though it were trying to get enough of its length clear to turn and strike me! Talk about Aaron's rod ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... woman, with the temper that befits it. Has the dark adder venom? So have I When trod upon. Proud Spaniard, thou shalt feel me! For from that day, that day of my dishonour, From that day have I curs'd the rising sun, Which never fail'd to tell me of my shame. From that day have I bless'd the coming night, Which ...
— The Revenge - A Tragedy • Edward Young
... treatment. Not that Mrs. Byron ever injures my sacred person. I am rather too old for that, but her words are of that rough texture, which offend more than personal ill usage. "A talkative woman is like an Adder's tongue," so says one of the prophets, but which I can't tell, and very likely you don't wish to know, but he was a true ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... might once more touch his brow with hers; and unconsciously she would put out her fingers, as though they might find their way into his hand. And then she would draw them back with a shudder, as though recoiling from the touch of an adder. ...
— Nina Balatka • Anthony Trollope
... wasteth at noonday." The allusion, of course, is to the fact that the great majority of these harlots are full of loathsome physical and moral disease; with the face and form of an angel, these women "bite like a serpent and sting like an adder;" their traffic is not for life, but inevitably for shame, disease, and death. Betrayed and seduced themselves, they in their ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... of Genesis we find the remarkable prediction uttered by Jacob in reference to Dan, that he "shall be a serpent in the way, an adder in the path, which biteth the horse's heels." The original term here is shephiphon, and is understood by several authors to denote the cerastes, a very poisonous kind of viper, distinguished by having horns. This animal, we ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... young woman rushing to Mrs. Seabright and throwing her arms about her neck. Between sobs she said, "Mother, mother, do with me what you will, just so you allow me to be with her when I choose. Oh, mother, how I wish you were now what you were before the adder bit you." ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... feathers new she sings; The turtle to her make hath told her tale. Summer is come, for every spray now springs: The hart hath hung his old head on the pale; The buck in brake his winter coat he flings; The fishes flete with new repaired scale. The adder all her slough away she slings; The swift swallow pursueth the flies smale; The busy bee her honey now she mings; Winter is worn that was ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... the sea, and hardly escaped drowning. Another time I fell out of a boat into Bedford river, but, mercy yet preserved me alive: besides, another time, being in a field, with one of my companions, it chanced that an adder passed over the highway, so I having a stick in my hand, struck her over the back; and having stunned her, I forced open her mouth with my stick, and plucked her sting out with my fingers; by which act had not God been merciful unto me, I ...
— Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners • John Bunyan
... The Adder or Serpent is coiled about the denuded stem; the upper branches reach to heaven, and bear at the top a new-born wailing infant, swathed in linen, whilst (here we ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... sure we think as much iv ye as we did whin ye'er name was first mintioned be th' stanch an' faithful press. Set here, ol' la-ad, an' warrum ye'er toes by th' fire. Set here an' r-rest fr'm th' gratichood iv ye'er fellow-counthrymen, that, as Shakspere says, biteth like an asp an' stingeth like an adder. R-rest here, as ye might r-rest at th' hearth iv millyons iv people that cud give ye no ...
— Mr. Dooley's Philosophy • Finley Peter Dunne
... this withered breast," answered the old woman, folding her hands on her bosom, as if pressing an infant to it, "and, though he has proved an adder to me—though he has been the destruction of me and mine—though he has made me company for the devil, if there be a devil, and food for hell, if there be such a place, yet I cannot take his life.—No, I cannot," she continued, with an appearance of rage against herself; ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... 'They'll turn me in your arms, lady, Into an esk and adder; But hold me fast, and fear me not, I am ...
— Ballads of Mystery and Miracle and Fyttes of Mirth - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Second Series • Frank Sidgwick
... clames licet et mare coelo Confundas; thunder, lighten, preach hell and damnation, tell them 'tis a sin, they will not believe it; denounce and terrify, they have [2043]cauterised consciences, they do not attend, as the enchanted adder, they stop their ears. Call them base, irreligious, profane, barbarous, pagans, atheists, epicures, (as some of them surely are) with the bawd in Plautus, Euge, optime, they cry and applaud themselves with that miser, [2044]simul ac ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... instant the step was irrevocable, the instant she had left the barrier behind, repentance set in. Even in the first days of her departure, in the fleeting moments of abandonment, when it may be supposed she might momentarily forget conscience, it was sharply wounding her with its adder stings; and she knew that her whole future existence, whether spent with that man or without him, would be a dark ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... a lady this night, Followed her far and lone, Fox and adder and weasel know The ways that ...
— Peacock Pie, A Book of Rhymes • Walter de la Mare
... curved in mockery through the air. He replaced it on his head, drew his rapier, with quick turns of his wrist swished the supple blade through the air till it sang, then flashed it out at me like the tongue of an adder, and said, "Sit you still, Farmer Wheatman, sit you still. Move but your hand and I spit you like a lark on a skewer. So, little ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... rare difference, outlaw—for whereas her tongue (honoured relict!) is tipped with gall, wormwood, henbane, hemlock, bitter-aloes and verjuice, and stingeth like the adder, the asp, the toad, the newt, the wasp, and snaky-haired head ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... moral costume of the table, and every profession of toleration or favour for the lower orders, that is, for the great mass of our fellow-creatures, treated as an indecorum and breach of the harmony of well-regulated society. In short, I prefer a bear-garden to the adder's den; or, to put this case in its extremest point of view, I have more patience with men in a rude state of nature outraging the human form than I have with apes 'making mops and mows' at the extravagances they have first provoked. I can endure the brutality (as it is ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... the good of another species; though throughout nature one species incessantly takes advantage of, and profits by the structures of others. But natural selection can and does often produce structures for the direct injury of other animals, as we see in the fang of the adder, and in the ovipositor of the ichneumon, by which its eggs are deposited in the living bodies of other insects. If it could be proved that any part of the structure of any one species had been formed for the exclusive good of another species, it would ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... their purpose by the bold actions of General Grant than by the blandest words of the smoothest-tongued Democrat in America. To any mere persuader, no matter what his place or his opinions, they would turn an ear as deaf as that of the adder,—refusing to listen to the voice of the charmer, charm he ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... pit of your own heart, Padahoon, and the adder that bites at the root of it. You are jealous of the fame and the office of Simwa, but you shall not sink your venom in the minds of the ...
— The Arrow-Maker - A Drama in Three Acts • Mary Austin
... hand was on his stony heart; his other pledged a lord who held a hollow beaker. Another sat, with earnest face beneath a mitred brow. He seemed to whisper in the ear of one who listened trustingly. But on the chest of him who wore the miter, an adder lay, close-coiled in flint. ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... Sheldon's cards, which the clerk looked at. He gave a little start as if an adder ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... certain sack, and knead it and bake some bread. On returning home, Sigmund asked whether his orders had been carried out. The lad replied by showing the bread, and when closely questioned he artlessly confessed that he had been obliged to knead into the loaf a great adder which was hidden in the meal. Pleased to see that the boy, for whom he felt a strange affection, had successfully stood the test which had daunted his brothers, Sigmund bade him refrain from eating of the loaf, for although he was ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... unclean Hath my insect never seen; But violets and bilberry bells, Maple-sap and daffodels, Grass with green flag half-mast high, Succory to match the sky, Columbine with horn of honey, Scented fern, and agrimony, Clover, catchfly, adder's-tongue And brier-roses, dwelt among; All beside was unknown waste, All was picture as ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... It must be by his death: and for my part, I know no cause to spurn at him, But for the general. He would be crown'd:— How that might change his nature, there's the question. It is the bright day that brings forth the adder; And that craves wary walking. Crown him?—That:— And then, I grant, we put a sting in him, That at his will ...
— Practice Book • Leland Powers
... disembowelled by the peasant's spade; at the foot of the hedge the pitiless urchin has stoned to death the Lizard, who was about to don his green, pearl-embellished costume. The passer-by has thought it a meritorious deed to crush beneath his heel the chance-met Adder; and a gust of wind has thrown a tiny unfledged bird from its nest. What will become of these little bodies and so many other pitiful remnants of life? They will not long offend our sense of sight and smell. The sanitary officers ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... for if so, he was a man of the sea, and the sea would not rest until it had got him back. So the grave was opened, and he really was found with his thumb in his mouth. So they laid him upon a cart and harnessed two oxen before it; and as if stung by an adder, the oxen ran away with the man of the sea over heath and moorland to the ocean; and then the sand ceased flying inland, but the hills that had been heaped up still remained there. All this Juergen heard and treasured in his memory from the happiest days of his ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... Voluminously the bloated boa convolves before him. All horrent the cobra exalts his hooded head, and the spanning jaws fly open. Quivers and chitters the tail of the cheerful rattlesnake; silently slips out the forked tongue, and is as silently absorbed. The fangless adder warps up the leg of the Professor, lays clammy coils about his neck, and pokes a flattened head curiously into his open mouth. The young man of Colusa is interested; his feelings transcend expression. ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... imminent; but our reason telling us that there is no danger does not suffice. I may mention a trifling fact, illustrating this point, and which at the time amused me. I put my face close to the thick glass-plate in front of a puff-adder in the Zoological Gardens, with the firm determination of not starting back if the snake struck at me; but, as soon as the blow was struck, my resolution went for nothing, and I jumped a yard or two backwards with astonishing rapidity. My will and reason were powerless against the imagination of ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... Dasent's 'Tales from the Norse,' or like the hero of the Algonquin tale and the Samoan ballad, she aids her alien lover to accomplish the tasks assigned to him. He ploughs with a plough of gold the adder-close, or field of serpents; he bridles the wolf and the bear of the lower world, and catches the pike that swim in the waters of forgetfulness. After this, the parents cannot refuse their consent, the wedding-feast is prepared, and all the world, ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang
... are the terrible cobra di capello, and other poisonous serpents of India; the South American fer de lance; the vipers of Europe; the North African crested viper; and the Cape of Good Hope and Western African puff adder; the Guinea nosehorn viper, and the common viper found in England—our only dangerous serpent. These serpents all inflict their poisonous wounds by means of two fangs, which they protrude from the mouth, and from the points of which they inject the ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... their colors. They are banded around their bodies with rings of bright colors. They will eat rats and mice and other snakes. The Milk Snake or "Checkered Adder" is popularly supposed to be fond of milk. Scientists tell us that this is a fallacy. It feeds on mice, rats, other snakes and lizards. The Red Milk Snake is prettily colored—red and yellow—and ...
— Pathfinder - or, The Missing Tenderfoot • Alan Douglas
... from the rough countryman, but hardly had they been uttered, when Viola sprang from her chair, as though an adder had stung her. "Uncle," she cried, and a small fist hovered before Gabriel's eyes in such a threatening manner that he involuntarily closed them. But the child, whose features reminded him so strongly of his dead sister, could not ...
— A Ghetto Violet - From "Christian and Leah" • Leopold Kompert
... under which all the Pisos had lived and flourished, which had protected the rights and nursed the virtues of her great husband and his family, were good enough for her, for her children, and for all. Her ear was closed against the sound of Christianity, as naturally as an adder's against all sound. She could not, and never did hear it. From her I received my principles and first impressions. Not even the history, nor so much as a word of the sufferings, of the Christians ever ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... better stars preserved me. I was warn'd, And laid not to my breast the pois'nous adder! Accuse not fate! your own deceitful heart It was, the wild ambition of your house. But God is with me. The blow was aim'd Full at my head, but your's it ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... said, Go to the tomb of that woman, and open it and behold what thou hast begotten on her; and if thou let to go, thou shalt have a great harm. And he yede and opened the tomb, and there flew out an adder right hideous to see; the which as swithe flew about the city and the country, and soon after the city sank down. And there be many perilous ...
— The Travels of Sir John Mandeville • Author Unknown
... any man I know. but a degrading passion fur shtrong drink is ruinin' you. I'm your besht fren, an' shay it wish tearsh in m' eyes. Lemme beg o' you t' reform ere it ish too late. Beware of it, my fren, beware of it. It shtingeth like a serpent, an' biteth like a multiplier—I mean an adder. You haven't got my shuperb self-control, an' so yer only shafety lies in total abstinence. Cheese it, my fren, cheese it on she sheductive ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... bushes, large as pine cones. One of them played with a litter of young hares; another ran a race with some young crows, which had hopped from their nest before they were really ready; a third caught up an adder from the ground and wound it around ...
— Christmas in Legend and Story - A Book for Boys and Girls • Elva S. Smith
... American Judas tree, trailing vines of "Tea Berry," and beneath dead leaves one caught an occasional glimpse of fragrant, pink arbutus. In marshy places beside the creek, swaying in the wind from slender stems, grew straw-colored, bell-shaped blossoms of "Adder's Tongue" or "Dog Tooth Violet," with their mottled green, spike-shaped leaves. In the shadow of a large rock grew dwarf huckleberry bushes, wild strawberry vines, and among grasses of many varieties grew patches of white and pink-tinted ...
— Mary at the Farm and Book of Recipes Compiled during Her Visit - among the "Pennsylvania Germans" • Edith M. Thomas
... animals that are doomed to be devoured, enjoy their lives until immediately before the catastrophe, takes none of its horror from the mode of death. To be dismembered alive is certainly not an agreeable experience, and I suggest that you should observe how, for instance, a water-adder swallows a frog; how the poor creature, seized by the hind legs, gradually disappears down its throat, while its eyes project staring out of their sockets; how it does not cease struggling desperately even ...
— The Silesian Horseherd - Questions of the Hour • Friedrich Max Mueller
... camping-place I nearly trod on a large puff-adder; this I killed with a stone. Almost immediately afterwards the boy who had been sent for firewood came up with a vicious-looking black and yellow serpent squirming, broken-backed, on his stick. This was more than my nerves could stand, so after filling the billy and the ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... hearing, and have they closed their eyes? I fear there are some few vipers among us, who, for ten or twenty pounds' gain, would sell their souls and their country, though at last it would end in their own ruin as well as ours. Be not like the deaf adder, who refuses to hear the voice of the charmer, charm he ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... fact is," said Robinson, confidentially, "he picked it up from an old Adder, that he met in ...
— Davy and The Goblin - What Followed Reading 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' • Charles E. Carryl
... that Mr. Beecher recreated that institution after it had been dead for many years, and invited those gentlemen to come into it, which they did, and so of course they have a right to turn him out if they want to. The difference between Beecher and the man who put an adder in his bosom is, that Beecher put in more adders than he did, and consequently had a proportionately livelier time of it when ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... 'em both, Master Scarlett?" said Nat, respectfully. "Black Adder knows me by heart, and I could ride him and take care of him when you didn't want him, or he'd do for master if ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... me like a young black snake just shed his skin waiting for that old adder to show ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... a charm we've got for conjuring him," quoth the other. "And we only want Swanny to dig, and then if the charm is only a sham charm, the adder will ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... a rock adder—one of the deadliest of African snakes. Barely more than three inches in length, and a dull gray in color, it was small wonder that Harry in his excitement had not seen it as he was about to jump ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... Abbey's broadest wall, Where ruining ivies propp'd the ruins steep— Her folded arms wrapping her tatter'd pall, [73:2]Had Melancholy mus'd herself to sleep. The fern was press'd beneath her hair, The dark green Adder's Tongue[74:1] was there; And still as pass'd the flagging sea-gale weak, The long lank leaf bow'd fluttering ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... devil slink away from thee abashed, issuing like an adder from thy heart, and then, with a sudden Protean change, driven from thy hovel as a thunder-cloud dispersing, when Simon Jennings seized the jar, hugged it as his household-god—and took it home with ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... remember Duncan, and to Irene he was like a fixed part of the scheme of nature. He had one defect which at this instant made him invaluable. He resented any imputation of the fact angrily, but he had been deaf as an adder for years. ...
— VC — A Chronicle of Castle Barfield and of the Crimea • David Christie Murray
... people don't tell such things about their friends in public conveyances," exclaimed Mistigris. "As for me, I'm not listening to you; I'm deaf: 'discretion plays the better part of adder.'" ...
— A Start in Life • Honore de Balzac
... the shade, And dreaming of revelries, An adder crawled upon his breast, And bit him in ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... up by the roots, though it be twisted with the chords of your life. Profit by the example of the miserable sinner that has passed from us, and embrace the means of grace while it is called to-day 'ere your conscience is seared as with a fire-brand, and your ears deafened like those of the adder, and your heart hardened like the nether mill-stone. Up, then, and be doing—wrestle and overcome; resist, and the enemy shall flee from you—Watch and pray, lest ye fall into temptation, and let the stumbling of others be your warning ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... me, more wretched than he is. What, dost thou turn away and hide thy face? I am no loathsome leper; look on me. What! art thou, like the adder, waxen deaf? Be poisonous too and kill thy forlorn queen. Is all thy comfort shut in Gloster's tomb? Why, then, dame Margaret was ne'er thy joy. Erect his statue and worship it, And make my image but an alehouse sign. Was I for this nigh wrack'd upon the sea, And twice by awkward wind from England's ...
— King Henry VI, Second Part • William Shakespeare [Rolfe edition]
... bend a sleeping maiden, near the notch a running hare. And after that he cut some arrows out of oak, put tips of sharpened copper on them, and five feathers on the end. Then he hardened the arrows and steeped them in the blood of snakes and the poison of the adder to ...
— Finnish Legends for English Children • R. Eivind
... caused a less painful death than the fangs of the asp, she had resolved that the bite of one of these reptiles should release her from the burden of life. The clever Ethiopian had thought of inducing her friend Pyrrhus to procure the adder, but it had required all Aisopion's skill in persuasion, and the touching manner in which she understood how to describe the Queen's terrible situation and severe suffering, to conquer the reluctance of the upright man. At last she ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... they are those of a deeply-feeling, strongly-resentful peasant-girl. Anguish has driven her from the ingle-nook of home to the white-shrouded and icy hills. Crouched under the "cauld drift," she recalls every image of horror—"the yellow-wymed ask," "the hairy adder," "the auld moon-bowing tyke," "the ghaist at e'en,", "the sour bullister," "the milk on the taed's back." She hates these, ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... "They have got him! The soldiers have got him!" and, as John was laying down his aunt to come and hear, she rushed up the stairs with, "And it is all your doing, you unnatural, good-for-nothing varmint! That was what you were after all night, you and your aunt, the adder that I have warmed at my bosom! Turning against your own poor father, to set them bloody-minded soldiers on him! And now he'll be taken and hanged, and I shall be a poor miserable widow woman all along ...
— The Carbonels • Charlotte M. Yonge
... made the Most High your abode, There shall no evil befall you, No plague come near your tent; For he will give his angels charge over you, To keep you in all your ways; They shall bear you up on their hands, Lest you strike your foot on a stone. You shall tread on the lion and adder, You shall trample on the young ...
— The Children's Bible • Henry A. Sherman
... some days previous to our reaching the Ojo de Vaca, the doctor had captured a snake of the adder kind, two or three species of lizards, and a hideous-looking animal, called, in hunter phraseology, the horned frog: the agama cornuta of Texas and Mexico. These he had immersed in the spirit for preservation. I had observed him ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... substratum in his nature, that Lamb had no sense of the rhythmical in prose composition. Rhythmus, or pomp of cadence, or sonorous ascent of clauses, in the structure of sentences, were effects of art as much thrown away upon him as the voice of the charmer upon the deaf adder. We ourselves, occupying the very station of polar opposition to that of Lamb, being as morbidly, perhaps, in the one excess as he in the other, naturally detected this omission in Lamb's nature at an early stage of ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... eavesdropper. This I have done for years—for years—and all for the sake of your private applause—and the hope of vengeance on a woman, who, if she did ill in murdering my father, has been bitterly repaid by nourishing a serpent in her bosom, that had the tooth, but not the deafened ear, of the adder." ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott |
