FREE-TRANSLATOR.COM • More 'Slippery' Quotes from Famous Books

... clean out the smaller fry—the "chicken feed" rustlers—as Van Horn called them. But toward morning, following much ill-natured dispute between Stone and Van Horn, the tactics were changed. It was decided to go after Dutch Henry first—as the more alert and slippery of the two—and as quietly as possible the silent invaders rode slowly along the creek past Gorman's place up ...

— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman

... little child leaning over to look at some soldiers that were passing through the street across the alley. He was supporting himself, by an iron wire that served as a lightning-rod. Already it was bending beneath his weight; and in his eagerness he was forgetting his slippery footing, and the dizzy height of thirty feet, over which he was hanging. He was a little three year-old fellow, too, and probably never knew anything about danger. His mother had always screamed as loudly when he fell from a footstool as when she had seen him leaning ...

— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... first he adventures on wheels, Has little control of his head or his heels. With knees on the shake, and arms shrinking, He scrambles about on the slippery floor, Like a toper at large, or a mad semaphore, Half wishing he ...

— Punch, Vol. 99., July 26, 1890. • Various

... its properties counteract the remaining brittle cementite. Eventually, in gray cast iron, we have properties which would be expected of wrought iron, whose tough metallic texture was shot through with flakes of slippery, weak graphite. ...

— The Working of Steel - Annealing, Heat Treating and Hardening of Carbon and Alloy Steel • Fred H. Colvin

... ridiculous nonsense, for having paddled to her, I was thrown into paroxysms of rage by repeated failures to scale her bulwarks, low as they were; my hands, indeed, could reach, but I found no hold upon the slimy mass, and three rope-ends which I caught were also untenably slippery: so that I jerked always back into the boat, my clothes a mass of filth, and the only thought in my blazing brain a twenty-pound charge of guncotton, of which I had plenty, to blow her to uttermost Hell. ...

— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel

... an immediate hold upon the miserable woman he addressed, though she gave little evidence of it, for he proceeded to add in a hard tone: "That or immediate confession to your husband, with me by to substantiate your story. No slippery woman's tricks will go down with me. Fix the date here and now and I promise to stand back and await the result in total silence. Dally with it by so much as an hour, and I am at your gates with a story that all must hear." Is it a matter of wonder that the stricken woman, without ...

— The Millionaire Baby • Anna Katharine Green

... last, in a heavy sea which threatened to dash small craft to pieces, a fishing-boat approached the "Carlo Alberto," containing some of the duchess's most devoted friends. With great danger she was transferred to it, and was landed on the French coast. She scrambled up slippery and precipitous rocks, and reached a place of safety. But the delay in the arrival of her steamer had been fatal to her enterprise. A French gentleman in the secret had hired a small boat, and put out to sea in the storm to see if he could perceive ...

— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer

... him after he was corrupted, received a hereditary taint. At first every part of the soul was formed to rectitude. There was soundness of mind and freedom of will to choose the good. If any one objects that it was placed, as it were, in a slippery position because its power was weak, I answer, that the degree conferred was sufficient to take away every excuse. For surely the Deity could not be tied down to this condition,—to make man such that he either could not or would not sin. Such a nature might ...

— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various

... bark of the red or "slippery" elm was always acceptable, in lieu of the chewing-gum which had not then become so common, to a certain ever-hungry boy who used to think as much of what a tree would furnish that was eatable as he now does of its beauty. Later, the other uses of the bark of this tree became known to the same ...

— Getting Acquainted with the Trees • J. Horace McFarland

... the Coupeaus, ceased doing any work, and as he never paid anything for his board, his presence not unnaturally hastened the downfall of his hosts. Circumstances conspired to renew the old relations between Gervaise and Lantier, and by easy stages she descended that somewhat slippery stair which leads to ruin. The shop was given up, and she again got employment in the laundry of Madame Fauconnier, though she was no longer the capable workwoman of former times. Nana, her daughter, vicious ...

— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson

... Balbi took a grip of Casanova's belt with his right hand, so that, in addition to making his own way, Casanova was compelled to drag the weight of his companion after him, and this up the sharp gradient of a roof rendered slippery by the mist. ...

— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini

... drew his sword and bade his comrades fight bravely for their lives; but again the clang of the bow was heard, and Eurymachus was stretched lifeless on the earth. So they fell, one after the other, until the floor of the hall was slippery with blood. But presently the arrows in the quiver of Odysseus were all spent, and laying his bow against the wall, he raised a great shield on his shoulder and placed a helmet on his head, and took two spears in his ...

— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy

... five o'clock by this time. We went down the slippery oak-staircase, and out into the quiet street. A bleak wind was blowing down from the hills, and the rooks' nests high up in the branches of the old trees about the cathedral were rocking like that legendary cradle in the ...

— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... behind him, and a cry Before. His own thought drove him like a goad. 185 Dry clash'd his harness in the icy caves And barren chasms, and all to left and right The bare black cliff clang'd round him, as he based His feet on juts of slippery crag that rang Sharp-smitten with the dint of armed heels— 190 And on a sudden, lo! the level lake, And the long glories of the ...

— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson

... is able, holding in his hand a short stick, which he throws at the dogs if they displease him, and catches again with great dexterity as he passes. This way of travelling is not without danger, for the temper of the dogs is such, that when they descend hills and slippery places, and pass through woods where the driver is exposed to wound himself with the branches and stumps, they always quicken their pace. The same is observed in case their master should fall off, which they instantly discover by the sudden lightness of the ...

— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day

... disappointment—one moment he steadies his darkling blue eyes on the aspect of them, and the next is racing after the car, swinging aboard, and setting the brakes, though the wheels lock and coast on down the rails, slippery with rain. For it is not the nature of him to falter or to parley with fortune—when she declares against him he takes his loss though it be that of life or limb, and ...

— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... though not to those gay flies Gilded i' the beams of earthly kings, Slippery souls in smiling eyes, But to poor shepherds' homespun things; Whose wealth's their flock, whose wit to be ...

— In The Yule-Log Glow—Book 3 - Christmas Poems from 'round the World • Various

... mother drop dead from an arquebuse shot as she leaned from the platform of the tower, his little sister fall with a slit throat across the altar steps of the chapel—and he ran, ran for his life, through the slippery streets, over warm twitching bodies, between legs of soldiers carousing, out of the gates, past burning farmsteads, trampled wheat-fields, orchards stripped and broken, till the still woods received him and he fell face down ...

— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton

... November 1st Friday 1805 A verry Cool morning wind hard from the N. E. The Indians who arrived last evining took their Canoes on ther Sholders and Carried them below the Great Shute, we Set about takeing our Small Canoe and all the baggage by land 940 yards of bad Slippery and rockey way The Indians we discoverd took ther loading the whole length of the portage 21/2 miles, to avoid a Second Shute which appears verry bad to pass, and thro which they passed with their empty canoes. Great numbers of Sea Otters, they are So cautious that I with ...

— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al

... horned steeds, and with a jingle-jangle of musical bells and a scudding, slippery hissing across the hard snow, the sledge sped off with fairy-like rapidity, and in a few moments its one little guiding lantern disappeared in the darkness ...

— Thelma • Marie Corelli

... apply to the buds and inner bark of the slippery elm. They are nutritious, acceptable food, especially when cooked with scraps of meat or fruit for flavoring. Furthermore, its flowers come out in the spring before the leaves, and produce very early in the ...

— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts

... Northern Canada Remedy for.—"Chew some of the bark of slippery elm and gargle the throat with saliva. This stops tickling ...

— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter

... slowly ascending, and now are bright with the full splendor of noon. Above that ridge rises another, and another yet, unseen at the foot. Begin the ascent. The mules tremble as they strive to keep their hold on the steep, slippery soil. Press upward in zigzag paths for hours. Reach the top of the ridge, and descend into the valley between it and another higher opposite; then, ascend again. As you thus slowly, patiently, yet surely reach the heart of the mountainous ...

— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various

... out by now how very slippery clay becomes as soon as it is wet enough. It is not easy to walk over a clay field in wet weather, and if the clay forms part of the slope of a hill it may be so slippery that it becomes dangerous. Sometimes ...

— Lessons on Soil • E. J. Russell

... closely upon his administration of the finances. He was invariably self-possessed and ready with an answer, and he eluded satisfactorily every attempt of the judges to entrap him, although, as one of his best friends confessed, "some places were very slippery." The second charge, treason against the State, was based upon a paper addressed to his wife, and found in his desk. Fifteen years before, after a quarrel with Mazarin, he had drawn up a plan of the measures to be taken by his family and adherents ...

— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various

... to have been in thrall to six haircloth chairs, a slippery sofa to match, and a very cold, marble-top center table, from the beginning of this century down to comparatively recent times. In all the best homes there was also a marble mantel to match the center table; on one end of this mantel was a blue ...

— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard

... the right quantity of cartridges and iron rations. In the evening we set off, laughing and singing, along the great curves of the road. At night we arrived swaying with fatigue and savagely silent, at a slippery and interminable ascent which stood out against stormy rain-clouds as heavy as dung-hills. Many dark masses stumbled and fell with a crash of accoutrements on that huge sloping sewer. As they swarmed up the chaos of oblique darkness which pushed them back, the men gave signs of exhaustion and anger. ...

— Light • Henri Barbusse

... guards with the pitchforks fell back, and my child cried aloud for fear; and when we were come to the place where the great waterwheel turned just below us, the driver fell with his horse, which broke one of its legs. Then the constable jumped down from the cart, but straightway fell too, on the slippery ground; Item, the driver, after getting on his legs again, fell a second time. Hereupon the sheriff with a curse spurred on his grey charger, which likewise began to slip as our horses had also done. Nevertheless, he came sliding towards us, without, however, ...

— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold

... constant in a circle of varied enchantments and pleasures. A Watteau landscape, sports, comedies, pastorals in the shade, a continual Embarkation for Cythera, that would have been the round she would have preferred. But once transported into the slippery enclosure of the court, she could realize her ideal very imperfectly. Kind and obliging by nature, she had to take up arms to defend herself against enmity and perfidy and to take the offensive to avoid being overthrown; necessity led her into politics and ...

— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton

... triumph of engineering, one of the largest dams in the world, holding six million gallons of water, used for irrigating ranches in Sweet Water Valley; and at La Jolla you will find pretty shells and clamber down to the caves. There the stones are slippery, and an absorbing flirtation should be resisted, as the tide often intrudes most unexpectedly, and in dangerous haste. Besides the caves the attractions are the fishing and the kelp beds. These kelp beds form a submarine garden, and the water is so clear that one can see ...

— A Truthful Woman in Southern California • Kate Sanborn

... low, as the girl had said, and the jagged rocks on which the bones of the ship lay stranded, stood black and prominent above the smooth water. The inner reefs were high and dry, and upon the slippery corrugations of the rocks, covered with seaweed and encrusted with shell-fish, the two walked; the Maori girl barefooted and agile, the Englishman heavily shod ...

— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace

... he had no more than three cannon with him, and three thousand five hundred soldiers, he determined to cut his way through, made his dispositions accordingly, and began his march. He had at first to march along a slippery road, crowded with baggage and runaways; with a violent wind blowing directly in his face, and in a dark and icy-cold night. To these obstacles were shortly added the fire of several thousand enemies, who lined the heights upon his right. As long as he was only attacked ...

— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur

... you," said one, "the Governor will have a busy time to-night. It beats last Christmas." And he made a run and a jump, and lit on a big pile of bundles which suddenly toppled over with him and nearly buried him as he sprawled on the slippery floor. This seemed a huge joke to all the others and they screamed with laughter at "Old Smartie," as they called him, and poured more bundles down on him, just as though they were having a pillow-fight. Then when Old Smartie had at last gotten on his feet, they had a great game of tag ...

— Tommy Trots Visit to Santa Claus • Thomas Nelson Page

... remembered getting down from the stage and out of the hall somehow. He remembered the crushed goldenrod, slippery under his feet. Against a background of blurred, unrecognizable faces, he remembered a tall, black-garbed figure that rose to its feet swaying and then steadying itself. It was Lilian Burr. Less clearly he remembered a wave of sound from ...

— The Wishing Moon • Louise Elizabeth Dutton

... shall fall before my throne, And dare not call their souls their own On my slippery path, lest I should fall, I'll think on the COAL-HOLE, and sing so small— With my slipper ...

— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various

... Why, at one time he had even me puzzled with his alibis and his evidence. That flash of the pearls was the cleverest trick I ever heard of; but it didn't go, I'd warned the judge to look out for a scoop. He knew he was dealing with one of the most slippery ...

— Aunt Jane's Nieces Out West • Edith Van Dyne

... thou not come into the city, that thy heart might be relieved from a load of servitude?' He replied: 'In it there dwell some wonderful and angel-faced charmers, and where the path is miry, elephants may find it slippery.'—Having delivered this speech, we kissed each other's head and face, and took our leaves:—What profits it to kiss our mistress's cheek, and with the same breath to bid her adieu. Thou mightest say that the apple ...

— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous

... combined to render it merely ridiculous, as reflected in the mirror of memory. The rain still fell heavily, lying in places to the depth of nearly a foot, and converting all the ground that was not rocky into a slippery quagmire. So profound was the darkness, that it was literally impossible to see any object six inches from one's eyes, and it was only by the occasional flashes from the firelocks of the persevering enemy and the forked lightning that we could realise the surrounding ...

— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot

... came off in the Assembly Room, now more exquisitely desolate than words can describe. Eighteen shillings was the "take." Behind a screen among the company, we heard mysterious gurglings of water before the entertainment began, and then a slippery sound which occasioned me to whisper C. C. (who laughed in the most ridiculous manner), "Soap." It proved to be the young lady washing herself. She must have been wonderfully dirty, for she took a world of trouble, and didn't come out clean after all—in a wretched dirty ...

— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens

... greeted this, and Howgah, the last of the Hungry Folk, swarmed up the steep slant and drew himself, crouching, upon the lip of the opening. But as he crouched, a muffled report rushed forth, and as he clung desperately to the slippery edge, a second. His grip loosed with reluctant weakness, and he pitched down at the feet of Tyee, quivered for a moment like some monstrous jelly, ...

— Children of the Frost • Jack London

... slippery road which skirted the mountain's base. Soggy, unseen farm lands and gardens to their left, Stygian forests above and to their right. Ahead, the far-distant will-o-the-wisp flicker of many lights, blinking in the foggy shroud. Three or four miles lay ...

— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon

... and frowned. There would be work for the pumps very shortly; there was always too much work for the pumps in Section D, and so too little time and opportunity for more progressive labour. Then, disregarding the obviously slippery state of the transverse beams, he stepped on to one of them, and stood poised for a moment over sixty feet ...

— Adventures in Many Lands • Various

... with this information, and said to Abou Hassan, "I cannot enough commend the measures you have taken, and the prudence with which you have acted, by forsaking your debauchery; a conduct rarely to be met with in young persons; and I esteem you the more for being steady to your resolution. It was a slippery path you trod in, and I cannot but admire your self-command, that, after having seen the end of your ready money, you could so far refrain as not to enter upon your rents, or even your estate. In short, I must own, I envy your situation. You are the happiest man in the ...

— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 3 • Anon.

... world advances Up the long and slippery slope; Step by step it slow upwanders Through the valleys of its hope; Leave the tasks that rise beyond you! Do the little deeds you can, And the millions coming after Shall complete what ...

— Oklahoma Sunshine • Freeman E. (Freeman Edwin) Miller

... the enemy; but the advanced season—it was already the beginning of September—occasioned troubles in the descent, equal to those which had been occasioned in the ascent by the attacks of the adjoining tribes. On the steep and slippery mountain- slope along the Doria, where the recently-fallen snow had concealed and obliterated the paths, men and animals went astray and slipped, and were precipitated into the chasms. In fact, ...

— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... use of his sliding habit to help him along, especially on down grades. He runs a little way and throws himself forward on his belly, sliding through the snow for several feet before he runs again. So his progress is a series of slides, much as one hurries along in slippery weather. ...

— Secret of the Woods • William J. Long

... her eyes, something inky black and dusky white was snatched at and seized by those nervous, slender, but determined little hands. Something dropped with clash and clatter on the resounding floor. Something ripped and tore as an agile, slippery, squirming form bounded from her grasp over the casement to the veranda, over the sill into the street, and when Brent and the doctor and the women-folk came rushing in and lamps were brought and Brent went shouting to sentries up and down the San Luis and ...

— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King

... bathe. At the edge of the rock an old grandmother had dealt valiantly with an indignant baby of two, whom, despite its struggles, she bathed after prolonged preparation of divers anointings, by holding it grimly, kicking and slippery though it was, under what must have seemed to it a terrible hurrying horror. When at last that baby emerged, it was too crushed in spirit ...

— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael

... down, to which, for a wonder, the Malay agreed. I was really curious to see him get down with two wheels and four horses, where I had to lay hold from time to time in walking. The track was excessively steep, barely wide enough, and as slippery as a flagstone pavement, being the naked mountain-top, which is bare rock. However, ...

— Letters from the Cape • Lady Duff Gordon

... left her sandwiches in the dog-cart, her servant had mistaken whisky for sherry when he was filling her flask; the day had clouded over, and already one brief but furious shower had scourged the curl out of her dark fringe and made the reins slippery. ...

— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross

... into the discovery of the intuitional forms of language. I do not know whether the suggested classification into four conceptual groups is likely to drive deeper or not. My own feeling is that it does, but classifications, neat constructions of the speculative mind, are slippery things. They have to be tested at every possible opportunity before they have the right to cry for acceptance. Meanwhile we may take some encouragement from the application of a rather curious, yet simple, historical test. Languages are in constant process of change, but it ...

— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir

... a dissenting voice. A ditch in the mud, that was all, no matter how much farther we went. So we passed out of the trench into a soapy, slippery mud which had been ploughed ground in the autumn, now become lathery with the beat of men's steps. Our party became separated when some foundered and tried to hoist themselves with both boot-straps at once. The CO. called out in order to locate us in the darkness, and the voice of an officer ...

— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer

... it about the babe, waded in the deepening waters to the door. As the tree swung again, broadside on, making the little cabin creak and tremble, she leaped on to its trunk. By God's mercy she succeeded in obtaining a footing on its slippery surface, and, twining an arm about its roots, she held in the other her moaning child. Then something cracked near the front porch, and the whole front of the house she had just quitted fell forward—just as cattle fall on their knees before they lie down—and ...

— Selected Stories • Bret Harte

... order their battle afresh, since Thiodolf's wedge which he had driven into the Roman host was but of a few and the foe had been many and the rampart and the shot-weapons were close anigh. Wise therefore it seemed to abide them of the second battle and join with them to swarm over the new-built slippery wall in the teeth of the ...

— The House of the Wolfings - A Tale of the House of the Wolfings and All the Kindreds of the Mark Written in Prose and in Verse • William Morris

... all have sought, But still the rogue unhurt is; While t'other juggler—who'd have thought? Tho' slippery long, has just been caught By old Archbishop Curtis;— And, such the power of papal crook, The crosier scarce had quivered About his ears, when, lo! the Duke Was of a Bull delivered! Sir Richard ...

— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... net, whilst the others dragged it along towards the sea. Loki then perceived that he had only two chances of escape, either to swim out to sea, or to leap again over the net. He chose the latter, but as he took a tremendous leap Thor caught him in his hand. Being, however, extremely slippery, he would have escaped had not Thor held him fast by the tail, and this is the reason why salmons have had their tails ever since so fine ...

— The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson • Saemund Sigfusson and Snorre Sturleson

... were within fifty paces of each other, not an inch of ground was won on either side. Firing commenced at seven in the morning, and was kept up till nightfall. All this time the British were exposed to a violent tropical downpour of rain, which rendered the abrupt declivity so slippery that it was almost impossible to maintain a foothold on it; and, finding he could make no impression on the enemy, the general, about 7 p.m., gave orders ...

— The History of the First West India Regiment • A. B. Ellis

... rail, advanced even with the chart-house. From this point I could distinguish voices in conversation, but the forms of the men could not be discerned. Still, without accurately locating them, I had ascertained all I required to know, and made my way back along the slippery deck. All hands were on duty forward, and would be held there for a time, at least, while the Sea Gull was slipping through the danger zone. But supper had not been served, and one of the watches might be piped down at any moment. This would bring ...

— Gordon Craig - Soldier of Fortune • Randall Parrish

... stream, on reaching which he seized his rifle and pack, leaped into the water, and began to wade from rock to rock, taking the direction of the western shore. The canoe whirled about in the furious current, now rolling over some slippery stone, now filling, and then emptying itself, until it lodged on the shore, within a few yards of the spot where the Iroquois ...

— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper

... but the pavement was all slushy and slippery, and his boots felt heavier and heavier, and, to add to his misery, the pursuers had found out their mistake. As he looked back, he could see the clown galloping round the corner and hear his ...

— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey

... In the position assumed by the two as they struggle the abdomen of the Philanthus is inside and that of the bee outside; thus the sting of the latter has under its point only the dorsal face of the enemy, which is convex and slippery, and almost invulnerable, so well is it armoured. There is no breach there by which the sting might possibly enter; and the operation takes place with the certainty of a skilful surgeon using the lancet, despite the indignant ...

— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre

... darted off across a slippery oak hall, up a flight of stone stairs with a velvety carpet, then along a passage leading to a private staircase with a red baize door shutting it off. It opened into a long low room, still keeping the name of nursery, and at each end were bed-rooms, one for ...

— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston

... sixteen, came and spoke to him, and entertained him so well, that he did not think much more of his offended dignity.—When they set off on their journey again, the Baron and several of his followers came with them to show the only safe way across the morass, and a very slippery, treacherous, quaking road it was, where the horses' feet left pools of water wherever they trod. The King and the Baron rode together, and the other French Nobles closed round them; Richard was left quite in the background, ...

— The Little Duke - Richard the Fearless • Charlotte M. Yonge

... stoned simple wretch than it shall be for thee; and it were better that men should go unsouled like the dogs, committing offence with their bodies, than souled horribly like thee, thou sinner of the mind, idolater of thine own image! Dost thou yet make slippery the ways of Mount Carmel, Battista? Dost thou yet hang the pearls which are the tears of Mary about thy neck? It shall be in such case that Carmel will be her holy hill no more, and those same pearls turned to leaden ...

— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett

... perfectly hateful to the English mind.... It isn't that we are simply backward in these things, we are antagonistic. The British mind has never really tolerated electricity; at least, not that sort of electricity that runs through wires. Too slippery and glib for it. Associates it with Italians and fluency generally, with Volta, Galvani, Marconi and so on. The proper British electricity is that high-grade useless long-sparking stuff you get by turning round a glass machine; stuff we used to call frictional electricity. ...

— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells

... head round the neck. If one gets the other by a finger even, it is a great advantage, as he would whip nimbly round, and threaten to break the impounded finger; this would be considered quite fair. One will often suddenly drop on his knees and try to reach the ankles of his adversary. I have seen a slippery customer, stoop suddenly down, grasp up a handful of dust, and throw it into the eyes of his opponent. It was done with the quickness of thought, but it was detected, and on an appeal by the sufferer, the knave was well thrashed ...

— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis

... jarring and jolting, an electric car came to a standstill just in front of a heavy truck that was headed in an opposite direction. The huge truck wheels were sliding uselessly round on the car tracks that were wet and slippery from rain. All the urging of the teamster and the straining of the horses were in vain,—until the motorman quietly tossed a shovelful of sand on the track under the heavy wheels, and then the truck lumbered on its way. "Friction is a very good thing," ...

— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden

... with the cliff rising above it and the canon yawning below. It was, in fact, only a ledge of the precipice, along which it was dangerous to pass even at a walk. Moreover, I had re-shod my horse at the mission. The iron was worn smooth; and I knew that the rock was as slippery as glass. ...

— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid

... Rebecca found herself once more upon the dark, still river, watching the slippery writhings of the moonbeams' path. She was alone, save for the ten stalwart rowers and two officers; but in one hand was her faithful umbrella, while in the other she felt the welcome weight of her ...

— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye

... disseminating among the lower classes, and as nearly gratuitously as possible, the exciting and poisonous food which is at last to end in the revolutionary fever."[113] The second class, strange to say, rested their hopes in this instance on the singularly slippery basis of soap. Sir C. Keightley moved (on the 20th of June) that instead of diminishing the stamp duty on newspapers, the duty on hard and soft soap should be reduced. The reduction of such duty would, he argued, by aiding cleanliness, promote the health and ...

— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt

... Knight," said Gaston, also leaping to the ground, while Eustace cautiously advanced along the narrow frame of wood on which the drawbridge had rested, slippery with the wet, and rendered still more perilous by the darkness. Gaston followed, balancing himself with some difficulty, and at last they safely reached the other side. Eustace tried the heavy gates, but found ...

— The Lances of Lynwood • Charlotte M. Yonge

... looked after us when we were sick. Used dock leaves, slippery elm for poultices. They put polk root in whiskey ...

— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Kentucky Narratives • Works Projects Administration

... and you have none, sir; then he is a sailor, and used to such things, and you are none, sir. Moreover, he was barefooted, while you have got on stiff, and I dare say slippery boots." ...

— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper

... An' then I roared. Shore that was the chance I was lookin' for. I swore the trails he hinted of would be tracked to the holes of the rustlers who made them. I told him I had sent for you an' when you got heah these slippery, mysterious thieves, whoever they were, would shore have hell to pay. Greaves said he hoped so, but he was afraid I was partial to my Indian son. Then we had hot words. Blaisdell got between us. When I was leavin' I took a partin' fling at him. 'Greaves, ...

— To the Last Man • Zane Grey

... making observations in the interior, and they did not go in vain. They instantly returned, and told us they had seen two Arab tents upon a slight rising ground. We instantly directed our steps thither. We had to pass great downs of sand very slippery, and arrived in a large plain streaked here and there with verdure; but the turf was so hard and piercing, we could scarcely walk over it without wounding our feet. Our presence in these frightful solitudes put to ...

— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous

... her with a brougham; Fifth Avenue was slippery with filthy, melting slush; yet, somehow, into her mind came the memory of her return from her first opera—the white avenue at midnight, the carriage, lamps lighted, speeding through the driving snow. Yesterday, the quiet, untainted whiteness of ...

— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers

... St. Marcel, 4 m. up the river, or 3m. W. from the village of St. Marcel. The price depends upon the time the visitors make the boat wait. The cave consists of a tunnel, 4m. long, which here and there widens out into spacious lofty caverns hung with stalactites. Some parts are very steep, slippery, and fatiguing. The visit requires from 6 to 7 hours, and certainly none but ardent lovers of walking in dark caverns should undertake the labour. The sail, however, is pleasant. The nearest hotels are at Pont-Saint Esprit ...

— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black

... for a time to gain breath, and then set to work to thoroughly explore the place; so we pushed on nearer and nearer, to find that, as we expected, we could pass right round behind the waterfall, over the slippery, wet stones, worn into seams, as if at one time the stream had rushed down them; but no trace of rift or passage could we find save one small crevice through which it seemed possible that ...

— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn

... blindfolded. The darkness did not worry him, but he walked somewhat more slowly than usual, for he knew that under the thin covering of fresh-fallen snow there lay the ice of the night before. He walked carefully, watching for the slippery places. ...

— The Case of The Pocket Diary Found in the Snow • Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner

... him what seemed to be the footprints of a single man. There was but a slight variation near the further shore, where the moccasin of one of the Winnebagos had slid from a stone on which, like all the others, it was placed. The brown stone was slippery with a faint coating of slime, and the scrape of the deerskin down the side gave it a white gleam like the belly of a fish. It was a "slip" in every sense, and, when the slight splash announced it, Black Bear at the head of the procession turned about ...

— The Hunters of the Ozark • Edward S. Ellis

... but this morn, they follow'd as their lord! Guard through the streets, bound like a fugitive, Instead of wreaths give fetters, strokes for stoops, Blind shames for honours, and black taunts for titles! Who would trust slippery chance? ...

— Sejanus: His Fall • Ben Jonson

... place," he decided, "Red might need me to smuggle him some grub or something and I got to be on hand. In the second place I had enough trying to ride two slippery sticks yesterday. Split myself in two for ten miles on a pair of devil's toboggans? Thanks awfully. I'll stay here ...

— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory

... perilous crags and slippery rocks to find rare eggs. In summer he and his companions rowed upon the lake, in ...

— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall

... matter died down and a lull followed. Then Eugene Sue's "Wandering Jew" appeared, and made great talk for a while. One character in it was a chief of Thugs—"Feringhea"—a mysterious and terrible Indian who was as slippery and sly as a serpent, and as deadly; and he stirred up the Thug interest once more. But it did not last. It presently died again this ...

— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... until they reached the edge of the cut. Here some plunged in, others were pushed in by the pressure from behind. Those who could swim were pulled down by their struggling comrades. Some got across and tried to climb the slippery side of the dike, but fell back and were seized by the Aztecs; whose canoes now dashed up, and added to the confusion by hurling a storm of missiles into ...

— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty

... on which Trewavas had landed was wet and covered with slippery seaweed. Experienced and cautious, he waited for a moment to make sure of his foothold, well knowing the dangers of slipping. Peril was nearer him than he knew. A roller came breaking in, sending a spurt of water right over the spot where he was standing. So precarious was his footing that ...

— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler

... until the road was red with blood and clogged with corpses. Back and forth along the slippery highway the tide of battle surged, but never once was the gateway ...

— Warlord of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... every time I walked between the hangings to launch a name into the salons, the chandeliers whirled round and round with hundreds of thousands of dancing lights, and the floors became inclined planes as slippery and steep as Russian mountains. I must have spluttered, that ...

— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet

... My dear, you've been perfectly foolish about hats this winter. This is a handwriting I don't know, but it's smart stationery—and, dear me, look at all these little cards. I really don't see how the postman bothers to see that they're all delivered; they're such little slippery ...

— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford

... other foundation than the calamities of the people, so often beaten by their enemies, that despairing of themselves they were contented with any change, if he had peace as in the days of Solomon, left but a slippery throne to his successor, as appeared by Rehoboam. And the agrarian, notwithstanding the monarchy thus introduced, so faithfully preserved the root of that commonwealth, that it shot forth oftener and by intervals continued longer than any other government, as may be computed from the institution ...

— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington

... for his goodness no less than his ability. His position has exposed him to very great difficulties, and therefore, if he is decidedly wrong, it is not for us to judge him. Read his "Kingdom of Christ," and his early books; but he is on very slippery and dangerous ground now. It is indeed a great and noble task to propose to oneself, viz.—to teach that God is our Father, and to expose the false and most unhappy idea that has at times prevailed of representing God as actuated by strong indignation, resentment, ...

— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge

... "Oh, I'm so glad! You have been so slippery about Altruria, you know, that I expected nothing but a point-blank refusal. Of course, I knew you would be kind about it. Oh, I can hardly believe my senses! You can't think what a dear you are." I knew she had got that word from some English people who had been in the ...

— A Traveler from Altruria: Romance • W. D. Howells

... on a fine, frosty, exhilarating morning, and we felt our minds, as well as our nerves, braced by the elasticity of the pure air. Our walk to the lake was delightful, or at least the difficulties were only such as diverted us,—a slippery descent, for instance, or a frozen ditch to cross, which made Hazlewood's assistance absolutely necessary. I don't think Lucy liked her walk the ...

— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... seething water like a rare growth of fungus. Another instant, and the full shock of that racing current struck our bow, hurling it about as if the trembling boat were an eggshell. Over him we went, his pudgy fingers digging vainly for some holding-place along the slippery planks, his eyes ...

— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish

... appeared to him in a hideous figure, and threw himself upon him to cast him down; as there was nothing by which he could support himself, Francis placed his two hands on the rock, which was very hard and slippery, and they sank into it, as if it had been soft wax, and this preserved him from falling. An angel appeared to him to put away his fright, and to console him, causing him to hear celestial music, the sweetness of which in so far suspended the powers of his soul, that it seemed ...

— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe

... tornado. This fierce strife of the elements continued without abatement the entire afternoon, and until two o'clock at night. Driving our horses before us, we were compelled to slide down the steep and slippery rocks, or wade through deep gullies and ravines filled with mud and foaming torrents of water, that rushed downwards with such force as to carry along the loose rocks and tear up the trees and shrubbery ...

— What I Saw in California • Edwin Bryant

... such tenacity his grip That nothing from his hand can slip. Well-buttered eels you may o'erwhelm In tubs of liquid slippery-elm In vain—from his detaining pinch They cannot struggle half an inch! 'Tis lucky that he so is planned That breath he draws not with his hand, For if he did, so great his greed He'd draw his last with eager speed. Nay, that were well, you say. Not ...

— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce

... a-makin' they sun'ry chicken-pies, which notinstanin' they all diff'ent, yit they all alike, faw they all turnovers! Yass, seh, they all spreads hafe acrost the dish an' then tu'n back. I has been entitle Slick an' Slippery Leggett—an' yit what has I always espress myseff? Gen'lemen, they must be sufficiend plenty o' chicken-pie to go round. An', Mr. March, if she don't be round, she won't go round. 'Tis true the scripter say, To them what hath ...

— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable

... be of the first watch ashore," cried Clarke, the master's mate; "for I'd twice liefer meet all the salvages of the Indies than to freeze like a clod, so here goes." And stepping upon the gunwale he made a spring in the dark, alighting upon a slippery rock and measuring his length upon the sand. Nothing daunted, however, he grasped a handful of sand in each fist, as if his prostration had been voluntary, and springing to his feet cried ...

— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin

... round he rode, through seven times seven countries, through forests still thicker, and rivers still wider, and mountains still more slippery than the others he had passed, till at length he reached a house where ...

— The Crimson Fairy Book • Various

... the proceedings we climbed the narrow, steep and slippery path up to the tableland in order to get an idea of the country behind the hills. Half-way up we met two old men carrying yam down to the beach. They were terrified at sight of us, began to tremble, stopped and spoke to us excitedly. We immediately laid down our rifles, and signed to them to approach, ...

— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser

... him, I made an estramazone, and my foot slipping at the same time,—not from any fault of fence on my part, or any advantage of skill on his, but the devil having, as I said, taken up the matter in hand, and the grass being slippery,—ere I recovered my position I encountered his sword, which he had advanced, with my undefended person, so that, as I think, I was in some sort run through the body. My juvenal, being beyond measure appalled at his own unexpected ...

— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott

... wider view of the beach. Then suddenly some huge figure started up between the rocks at her feet; she gave a little scream, her foot slipped, and in the next moment she lay—in Strand's arms. He offered no apology, but silently carried her over the slippery stones, and deposited her tenderly upon the smooth white sand. There it occurred to her that his attention was quite needless, but at the moment she was too startled to ...

— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen

... had not sought for his lost child, Arthur carried her home, while the master carefully lighted their slippery path. ...

— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz

... scene grows wilder and grander. Seaward tower the rocky cliffs, falling sheer to their base, jagged slate rocks which are the home of gulls and ravens, with precipitous slopes of short and slippery grass, where the mountain sheep feed; inland the brown moor stretches, bare and open to the sky, with a cluster of little cottages and a grey church hidden and sheltered in ...

— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland

... very respectable men, and good working politicians. A less inquisitive man than a citizen of Cape Cod is acknowledged to be, could not have failed to discover the artifice. But my enthusiasm carried away my discretion; and, after descending six slippery steps, we came to a door upon which my companion gave two loud knocks, and placed his ear to the crevice. Mutterings, in a tongue very like the Tuscan, were interspersed with loud swearings, which were in turn diffused with curious whisperings. Another loud ...

— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"

... Poor Visanteta was writhing furiously, unable to bear such pain; her eyes bulged from their sockets and her features were distorted. She must be operated upon; her entrails must be opened and the green, slippery demon that was eating ...

— Luna Benamor • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... Perhaps some time your wish may be gratified. I hope it may be," he returned, in an earnest tone. "Now give me your hand, and let me assist you down this slippery path." ...

— Virgie's Inheritance • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon

... saw them laboring up the slippery concrete walk, up the perilous front steps, and came to ...

— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis

... on a snowy morning in the winter has to encounter about the most unpleasant circumstances imaginable. Icicles hang from the eaves of the rick, and its thatch is covered with snow. Up the slippery ladder in the dark morning, one knee out upon the snow-covered thatch, he plunges the broad hay-knife in and cuts away an enormous truss—then a great prong is stuck into this, a prong made on purpose, with extra ...

— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies

... 1933, the faithful colored friends of Uncle Porter Scales transported his body from St. Stephen's African Methodist Episcopal Church located on the Madison-Mayodan highway to a plantation grave yard several miles east of town, along roads slippery with sleet. He was buried by the side of his first wife on the 130 acre farm which Uncle Porter said he bought from Mr. Ellick Llewellyn to raise his family on and which he later swapped to Mr. Bob Cardwell for a town house in Pocomo (Kemoca, a suburb from first syllables of promoters' names, ...

— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves, North Carolina Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration

... aside with a quick abhorrence, as he saw that his feet were indeed smearing the blood over the polished and slippery surface of the oak boards, and in moving he stumbled against a dark lantern in which the light still burnt, and which the robbers in their flight ...

— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... getting down the ladders was not very pleasant. They were all quite perpendicular, the rounds were placed at irregular distances, were many of them much worn away, and were slippery with water and copper-ooze. Add to this, the narrowness of the shaft, the dripping wet rock shutting you in, as it were, all round your back and sides against the ladder—the fathomless darkness beneath—the ...

— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins

... rarefied atmosphere, their feet crushing over the scoriae and black-glazed volcanic sand, until they stood in the region of perpetual snow, amidst the glittering, treacherous glaciers and crevasses, with vast slippery-pathed ...

— The San Francisco Calamity • Various

... Adown each slippery precipice Rattled the loosen'd rocks, like balls Shot from his booming thunder guns, Whose smoke, effacing stars and suns, Darkens the stifled heaven, and falls Far off in arrowy showers ...

— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy

... the River, where a ferry boat was in waiting to take us across below the junction. Then we started on our journey towards the south, along the right bank of the Laowatan branch of the Yangtse. The road was a tracking path cut into the face of the cliff; it was narrow, steep, winding, and slippery. There was only just room for the chair to pass, and at the sudden turns it had often to be canted to one side to permit of its passage. We were high above the river in the mountain gorges. The comfort of the traveller in a chair along this road depends entirely upon the sureness ...

— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison

... meadow-land, dappled over with browsing kine knee-deep in grass and flowers; then a deep pool that mirrored all, and shone like silver; then more trees with floating shade, and homesteads rich in wheat-stacks; then a willowy brook that sparkled on merrily to an old mill-wheel, whose slippery stairs it lazily got down, and sank to quiet rest in the stream below; then came, crowding in rich profusion, wide-spreading woods and antlered oaks; and golden gorse and purple heather; and sunny orchards, with their dark-green waves that in Spring foamed ...

— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede

... in the packed and swaying train, and when they emerged at Sixty-fifth Street they had only one slippery, cold, dark block to walk. But when they had reached the flat, and snapped on lights everywhere, and cast off outer garments, aproned and busy, in ...

— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris

... the slippery noose light upon my shoulders. I flung out my arms to throw it off, but with a sudden jerk it tightened around my neck. I clutched the hard thong, and pulled with all my might. It was ...

— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid

... in such places as my companions overlooked. Presently, under a large, bulging bluff, I saw a dark spot, which took the shape of a figure. This figure, I recollected, had been presented to my sight more than once, and now it stopped me. The hard climb up the slippery stones was fatiguing, but I did not hesitate, for I was determined to know. Once upon the ledge, I let out a yell that quickly set my companions in my direction. The figure I had seen was a dark, red devil, a painted image, rude, unspeakably wild, ...

— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey

... Alberich," answered the dwarf as he tried to climb up on the slippery rocks. "I came from the kingdom of the Nibelungs, down under ...

— Opera Stories from Wagner • Florence Akin

... stand firm and resist the shock of the enemies as they rushed upon him. Unless our footing is good we shall be tumbled over by the onset of some unexpected antagonist. And for good footing there are two things necessary. One is a good, solid piece of ground to stand on, that is not slippery nor muddy, and the other is a good, strong pair of soldier's boots, that will take hold on the ground and help the wearer to steady himself. Christ has set our feet on the rock, and so the first requisite is secured. If ...

— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren

... apparent. Harrison was to be turned from the defender into the attacker. The result of the rally in the last round had convinced his seconds that when it came to give-and-take hitting, their hardy and powerful man was likely to have the better of it. And then on the top of this came the rain. With the slippery grass the superior activity of Wilson would be neutralized, and he would find it harder to avoid the rushes of his opponent. It was in taking advantage of such circumstances that the art of ringcraft lay, and many a shrewd and vigilant second had won a losing ...

— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle

... attendant; and paying Isabel some compliments on her appearance, was handing her over to the weather-side, where Mrs Ferguson was seated, when a sea of larger dimensions than usual careened the ship to what the sailors term a "heavy lurch." The decks were wet and slippery. Captain Drawlock lost his footing and was thrown to leeward. Isabel would have most certainly kept him company; and indeed was already under weigh for the lee-scuppers, had not it been that Newton Forster, who stood near, caught her round ...

— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat

... is generally an unsatisfactory form, because it gives the idea of useless trouble in building it, though it occurs quaintly and pleasantly in the former windows of France: I believe it is also objectionable because it has an indeterminate, slippery look, like that of a bubble rising through a fluid. It, and all elongated forms, are still more objectionable placed horizontally, because this is the weakest position they can structurally have; that is to say, less ...

— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin

... touched and soothingly, 'give not thyself the pain to cross these slippery floors, my attendant will bring to me what thou hast to present'; and she motioned to the ...

— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton

... than the south and the qualities of the people are of higher grade, but the bulk of emigration is from the region of Naples and Sicily. Among the southern Italians the percentage of illiteracy is high, they have the reputation of being slippery in business relations, and not a few anarchists and criminals are found among them. It is not reasonable to expect that these people will measure up to the level of the steady, reliable, and hard-working ...

— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe

... her fate; but at this moment came a strong swirl of tide, the log swung round once more and floated off, and the rescuer fell "all along" into the water. This was nothing unusual, and he came puffing and panting up the slippery logs, and sat down again, shaking himself like a Newfoundland puppy. He wished the shipwrecked crew had not seen him; he knew he should get a whipping when he reached home, but that was of less consequence. Anyhow, she was an old vessel, and now the captain would get a new ship—a fine one, ...

— Nautilus • Laura E. Richards

... treacherous water holes into which the travelers plunged at times foot deep. In one such a plunge Payne's boots sent squirming a nest of slimy water moccasins. A moment later he slipped and all but fell on the hard slippery back of ...

— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen

... are not written for young persons who, in order to avoid false steps and slippery roads, ought to spend their youth in blissful ignorance, but for those who, having thorough experience of life, are no longer exposed to temptation, and who, having but too often gone through the fire, are like ...

— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... progress, they suffered excessive hardships for several days. Food became so scarce, that they were obliged to separate into eight different parties, in order to procure subsistence. The roads were so mountainous, stony, and slippery, that it was with the greatest difficulty the horses could be prevented from stumbling; and many of them fell. In one instance, the whole party were four days without food; and some of them had their feet frozen. At length, they were obliged to leave the horses; ...

— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley

... very last year, children—the lilac-bush grew tired of being good and working hard; and the more it thought about it, the sadder and sorrier and more discouraged it grew. The winter had been dark and rainy; the ground was so wet that its roots felt slippery and uncomfortable; there was some disagreeable moss growing on its smooth branches; the sun almost never shone; the birds came but seldom; and at last the lilac-bush said, "I will give up: I am not going to bud or bloom or do a single thing for Easter this year! I don't care if my trunk ...

— Polly Oliver's Problem • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin

... had assumed command of the expedition, and involuntarily, the others obeyed him. That mile was a dreadful walk! At first, it seemed fairly easy, for the road was a good one, though wet and slippery. But soon the satin slippers were soaked; stones and bits of gravel made their way inside, and at last Patty found it almost impossible to keep hers on at all. Jack tried to help, by tying the little slippers on with his own and Patty's handkerchiefs, but ...

— Patty's Butterfly Days • Carolyn Wells

... Keith; and now you will go into the boat, and you will take care of your footing, for the night is dark, and the rocks they are always slippery whatever." ...

— Macleod of Dare • William Black

... done? In emergencies like that men think quickly and to the point. The raft must be passed, or all was at an end. The logs had been long in the water, and doubtless were slippery with river slime. The launch might be run upon and over them. Once inside the raft, it could never return. No matter for that. He was there to sink the Albemarle. The smaller contingency of losing his own life was a matter to be ...

— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... is desolate, the lane to the river is slippery. The wind is roaring and struggling among the bamboo branches like a wild ...

— The Crescent Moon • Rabindranath Tagore (trans.)

... rate at last, that it was because he would not. Cecil read his mind, had no faith in his gratitude, and accounted the duties of a dead friendship discharged by attempts to mitigate rather than to reverse his doom. Harassed by business and the toil of keeping his slippery footing, he would feel chiefly a dull irritation at the captive, whether guiltless or guilty, for the obstinacy of his dispute with accomplished facts. He ought, the Minister, like his avowed enemies, ...

— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing

... of the "Lucky Isle" was largely clay, moist and slippery, and as the eager young viking climbed the bank his right foot slipped, and he would have fallen had not he struck his left foot firmly in the clay and thus saved himself. But to slip at all was a bad sign in those old, half-pagan, ...

— The Junior Classics • Various

... the ladder with some precaution, for the steps were unequal, broken, wet, and slippery; and having placed himself in the stern of the boat, made a signal to the men to push off, and turned to take farewell of his guide. To his utter astonishment, Fenella rather slid down, than descended regularly, the perilous ladder, and, the boat being already pushed off, made ...

— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott

... vew minutes he says, 'Look owt!' Oi didn't know what to look owt vor, and down oi goes plump into t' water. Vor all at once we had coomed upon a lot o' rocks covered wi' a sort of slimy stuff, and so slippery as you could scarce keep a footing on 'em. Oi picks myself up and vollers him. By this toime, maister, oi war beginning vor to think as there warn't so mooch vun as oi had expected in this koind o' business. Oi had been working two hours loike a nigger a-carrying tubs. Oi had ...

— Through the Fray - A Tale of the Luddite Riots • G. A. Henty

... a girl—no taller than a bundle of firewood, as slippery as an eel, and as nimble as a monkey—got in at the top of the oven, and opened the front door. The dogs were well crammed with balls, and as dead as herrings. I settled the two women. Then when I got the swag, Ginetta locked the door and got out ...

— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac

... opportunities. The sound of this slight struggle caught the beaver's ear. It stopped work, wheeled, and made for the water hole. The lynx sprang from his ambush, seized the beaver by the back, and held on; but the beaver was double the lynx's weight, the bank was steep and slippery, the struggling animals kept rolling down hill, nearer and nearer the hole. Then, on the very edge, the beaver gave a great plunge, and splashed into the water with the lynx clinging to its back. At once they disappeared, and the hunters ...

— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton

... ladders as old as Man, by slippery edges of the dreaded abyss, with an ominous dizziness about my heart and a feeling of horror in the soles of my feet, I clambered from tower to tower till I found the door that I sought; and it opened on to one of the upper branches of a huge and sombre ...

— The Book of Wonder • Edward J. M. D. Plunkett, Lord Dunsany

... which she has read, and nevertheless they have fallen into the abyss which they so much dreaded, I would almost say while fleeing from it. But when they take their stand on a declivity so steep and slippery, nothing short of a ...

— Serious Hours of a Young Lady • Charles Sainte-Foi

... rough, steep, paved alleys, slippery with frost, and with their vista of snow mountains against the sky, and passed by the church steps strewn with box and laurel, with the faint smell of incense coming out, there returned to me—I know not why—the recollection, ...

— Hauntings • Vernon Lee

... rang, and the boat began to move very slowly away from the wharf—perhaps a minute early. Knollys told Marcella afterwards that he guessed the captain had sailed early on purpose, for just at that moment he saw a group of four people dripping with rain rush on to the slippery boards of the jetty. They were four who had been pretty noticeable as law-breakers during the whole trip—at least, so the captain thought. Marcella gave a cry of hapless disappointment as she saw Louis with Ole Fred, the red-haired man and another. They were laughing wildly, and ...

— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles

... sacrifice, he sent those three brothers to the sea to fetch a turtle. So off they went, and when they had found a turtle, the eldest said to his two brothers, "Let one of you take the turtle for our father's sacrifice; I cannot take it, as it is all slippery with slime." When the eldest said this, the two younger ones answered him, "If you hesitate about taking it, why should not we?" When the eldest heard that, he said, "You two must take the turtle; ...

— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... engineer, "We must give our engine some sand." So they took some sand and they filled the sand domes on top of the boiler so that he could send sand down through his two little pipes and sprinkle it in front of his wheels when the rails were slippery. And all the time ...

— Here and Now Story Book - Two- to seven-year-olds • Lucy Sprague Mitchell

... of God, he became not only a temperance man, but a Christian, and in his great joy and gratitude for his own salvation was filled with a desire to warn and rescue others, whose feet were treading the same slippery paths. He then began holding Gospel Temperance Meetings, as he had opportunity in many places mostly within the County of Brome. This county has long held an honored position as being one of the leading temperance counties ...

— The Story of a Dark Plot - or Tyranny on the Frontier • A.L.O. C. and W.W. Smith

... path, the wind ripped his whistling from his lips. He hunched his back against it and walked faster, swearing as he stumbled on hidden rocks. The ice-sheathed ground was slippery underfoot, and the cold bit like ...

— The Valor of Cappen Varra • Poul William Anderson

... bend,—and we are looking down upon the famed Cerizet cascade. It is a broad rush of the stream, thundering beneath the bridge; there is an unexpected body to the fall; the massed water bounds down a double ledge, and swirls angrily away down the gorge. The scene is strikingly set, with slippery rocks and dark-green box bordering the torrent, and the cliffs rising sharply around, naked and bony or furred with box and pine. This is the favorite short drive from Cauterets. Pedestrians seek it, as well. The Cerizet holds the ...

— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix

... He also could tell tales of wondrous interest connected with man-of-war life. He loved to talk of his cruises in the Mediterranean, of the whizzing of cannon balls, the mutilation of limbs, decks slippery with gore, levanters, pressgangs, boatswains' calls, and the cat-o'-nine tails of the ...

— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper

... out many days on this trip when I was caught in a storm on the heights above tree-line. I at once started downward for the woods. The way among the crags and precipices was slippery; the wind threatened every moment to hurl me over a cliff; the wind-blown snow filled the air so that I could see only a few feet, and at times not at all. But it was too cold to stop. For two hours I fought my way downward ...

— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills

... seene such a solitarie lumpe of ise remaining (after the other parts thereof were driuen away) and lying vpon the shore for many weekes together, without any posts or engines at all to stay it. Therefore it is plaine that these miracles of ise are grounded vpon a more slippery foundation then ...

— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation, v. 1, Northern Europe • Richard Hakluyt

... These should be understood by Brahmanas venerable for years, conversant with duties, and truthful in speech. Sound and touch should be known as the two qualities of wind. Touch has been said to be of various kinds. Rough, cold and like wise hot, tender and clear, hard, oily, smooth, slippery, painful and soft, of twelve kinds is touch, which is the quality of wind, as said by Brahmanas crowned with success, conversant with duties, and possessed of a sight of truth. Now space has only one quality, and that is said to be sound. I shall speak at length of the ...

— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... his lungs. The next instant a great rock reared like a living thing in his face; he plunged against it, was beaten over it, and again he was going down—down—in that deadly clutch of maelstrom and undertow. Again he fought, and again he came to the surface. He saw a black, slippery wall gliding past him with the speed of an express train. And now it seemed as though a thousand clubs were beating him. Ahead of him ...

— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood

... Here then, you will say, is a fundamental obstruction to literary justice in America! But your hasty conclusion will show that you have thought but little on written constitutions. I agree with the Count de Maistre, that such instruments are of all things the most slippery. What is easier than for Congress to evade its restriction, and make the limited time exactly the years of Methusaleh! Such a limit would be about as good as "to one's heirs for ever." But there is yet another facility in written constitutions: "a breath unmakes ...

— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various

... all bore a hand. The lines to be used were made of rawhide, which would have been slippery except for the large knots tied every foot or so to give a good handhold. Of course, in all this, as much in as out of the water, pretty much every one in the party got soaked to the skin, but this was accepted as part of the day's work, and they all went steadily on down the ...

— The Young Alaskans in the Rockies • Emerson Hough

... the roses in a garden, but we pluck one. I plucked one, and alas, messieurs, it pricked my finger. She was a chambermaid, her name Annette, her figure ravishing, her face an angel's, her heart — alas, messieurs, that I should have to own it! — black and slippery as a patent leather boot. I loved to desperation, I adored her to despair. She transported me — in every sense; she inspired me. Never have I cooked as I cooked (for I had been promoted at the hotel) when Annette, my adored Annette, smiled on me. Never' — and here his ...

— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard

... over the side, and standing as best he could upon the slippery carcass, dug out the lump and bound it up ...

— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris

... inhabit. The ways are generally crooked and full of turnings, sometimes strewed with flowers, sometimes choked up with briars; rotten ground and deep pits frequently lie concealed under a smooth and pleasing surface; all the paths are slippery, and every slip is dangerous. Sense and discretion must accompany you at your first setting out; but, notwithstanding those, till experience is your guide, you will every now and then step out of your ...

— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield

... playing to win money so much as to study the characters of those present. Bill he knew already fairly well as a tough nut to crack, game to the core, and staunch to his friends. Blackwell was a bad lot, treacherous, vindictive, slippery as an eel. Even his confederates did not trust him greatly. But it was Soapy Stone and young Cullison that interested Flandrau most. The former played like a master. He chatted carelessly, but he overlooked no points. Sam had ...

— Crooked Trails and Straight • William MacLeod Raine

... stretching from bank to bank, lying at all angles and of all sizes, from six to ten inches in diameter. Then it ran five or six feet quietly, around smooth rocks here and there above the water, and ended by plunging over a mass of bowlders to a lower level. The bird began by mounting one of those slippery rounded stones, and thrusting her head under water up to her shoulders. Holding it there a few seconds, apparently looking for something, she then jumped in where the turmoil was maddest, picked an object from the bottom, and, returning to the ...

— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller

... don't go on the grass," she said, "or you may soil your frocks. It has been raining, and it is wet and muddy." For a short time they walked up and down the path as good as gold. Then Ada saw a frog hop away over the grass. She forgot her mother's command, and ran after it. The grass was slippery; she fell, and her clean frock was all smeared and spoilt by muddy streaks. Her mother came out and was very vexed. "Now, Ada, you will have to stay at home. I can't take you in a dirty frock. It will serve you right for being so disobedient." Ada cried and sobbed, and said ...

— 'Me and Nobbles' • Amy Le Feuvre

... alive at the stake before I would play tricks with my word or break my promise when 'twas given. Women think they can swear a thing and unswear it, to save or please themselves. They give themselves to a man and then repent it and are slippery. If I had given myself, and found I had been a fool, I would keep faith. I would play no tricks—even though I learned to hate him. No, I will ...

— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... time's up," interrupted Gashford, roughly; "we must be off. Now, march, my young slippery-heels. I needn't tell you not to try to bolt again. You'll find it difficult ...

— Twice Bought • R.M. Ballantyne

... in single file and girls in single file behind, Miriam drearily recognised that it was June. The month of roses, she thought, and looked out across the flat green fields. It was not easy to walk along the slippery pathway. On one side was the little grey river, on the other long wet grass repelling and depressing. Not far ahead was the roadway which led, she supposed to the farm where they were to drink new milk. She would have to walk with someone when they came to the road, and talk. She wondered ...

— Pointed Roofs - Pilgrimage, Volume 1 • Dorothy Richardson

... their bare branches. The ground was not frozen yet and would have been entirely dry, after the long dry period that had been prevailing, if the cold of the season had not covered it with a film of moisture. This did not render the ground slippery, however, but rather firm and resilient so that the children made good progress. The scanty grass still standing on the meadows and especially along the ditches in them bore the colors of autumn. There was no frost on the ground and ...

— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various

... it we went for th' next two days. Don't believe we'd even 'a started, though, if we hadn't known two days at th' most 'd cure them o' still-huntin'. Gettin' out 'fore sun-up, with every log in th' brules frosted slippery 's ice 'n' every bunch o' brush a pitfall, climbin' 'n' slidin' jumpin' 'n' balancin,' any 'n' every kind o' leg motion 'cept plain honest walkin,' was several sizes too big a order for them. So th' second mornin' ...

— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson

... difficulties, or paying too much attention to them. That man, say they, is in imminent danger of heresy who, instead of receiving the truth with the simplicity of a little child, goes about to worry himself with its difficulties. He walks in dark and slippery places. We agree with them in this, and commend their wisdom: for it presents the only chance which their system has of retaining its hold on the human mind. But before accepting this scheme on the ground of its evidence, we have deemed it prudent to look into the very interior of the ...

— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe

... from among them and across the ice went Carmen, up the slippery hillside, and straight to the multi-mouthed machine gun, at the side of which stood Major Camp. She had been all night with these bewildered, maddened people. She had warmed shivering babes at her own breast. She had comforted ...

— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... shouting, and hissing of steam rang the order to "cast off!"—a sudden rush to the gangways—a scampering ashore of visitors-a revolution of the wheels, and we were off—the pic-nic was begun! Two very mild cheers went up from the dripping crowd on the pier; we answered them gently from the slippery decks; the flag made an effort to wave, and failed; the "battery of guns" spake not—the ...

— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... walked his feet splashed in a pool of greasy and slippery water, which had such a heavy smell of fish fried in oil that Pinocchio ...

— The Adventures of Pinocchio • C. Collodi—Pseudonym of Carlo Lorenzini

... I ought to have said something about the travelling in those wild countries, which is anything but pleasant. The soil is a species of clay, hard as a flint when the weather is dry, but running into a slippery paste as soon as moistened. It is, therefore, very fatiguing, especially in wet weather, when the soldiers slip about in a very laughable manner to look at, but very distressing to themselves. I travelled either on ...

— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat

... flashes of the sea and calm of the evening sky beyond; and then the third moment would be hideous. For the figure of the ungainly foe would stride across the delicious vision, huge against the waves like Cyclops, and like him gesticulant, but unhappily not so single-eyed that the slippery fair might despise him. Then away would fly all sense of art and joy in the touch of perfection, and a very nasty feeling would ensue, as if nothing were worth living for, and nobody could be ...

— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore

... Slogger, turning round, walked quickly away, and his little friend entered the class-room in a state of mind pendulating between disgust and despair, for he had no expectation of seeing the slippery Slogger again ...

— My Doggie and I • R.M. Ballantyne

... guests were escorted through the perilously slippery hall, on which the mats seemed to turn into fresh pitfalls and slide beneath the feet; then through a side-door on to a miniature lawn, in the centre of which stood Mrs Percival, sweetly smiling, and ejaculating endlessly: ...

— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... the sleds sped forward. They entered the defile. The trail twisted up the side of the abyss. Less than three feet wide for long stretches, the dogs had to slacken and pass upward in line, one by one. Covered with new ice it was dangerously slippery, and in climbing the men had to hold to jutting icicles ...

— The Eternal Maiden • T. Everett Harre

... however, it is a sign of mental health that a man should be able to cast behind him the barren memories of bygone squalor. We may be sure that whatever were the external ordeals of his apprenticeship in the slippery craft of the literary adventurer, Burke never failed in keeping for his constant companions generous ambitions and high thoughts. He appears to have frequented the debating clubs in Fleet Street and the Piazza of Covent Garden, and he showed the common taste of his time for the theatre. He ...

— Burke • John Morley

... out with a dazed sense of unreality. He followed her immediately; his hand, hard and muscular, grasped her arm. He led her up the wooden steps all shining and slippery in the rain. ...

— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell

... up, and going to a window looked down at the quiet world below. The fog was lifting. Automobiles were making cautious progress along the slippery street. A woman with a basket had stopped under the street light and was rearranging her parcels. The clock of the city hall, visible over the opposite roofs, marked only twenty minutes to nine. It was still early evening—not even midnight, the ...

— Sight Unseen • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... forever. In this incessant shifting of the various particles that make up the Universe, how can you expect a man to hold fast to so unstable a thing as an idea! And, respecting the testimony offered by sight and sense, can YOU rely upon such slippery evidence?" ...

— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... more liquor into the Indian Bush on the Grand River Reserve and drawn more timber out of it to the Hamilton and Brantford markets than any forty dealers put together. Gradually, the law thinned the whole lot out—all but me; but I was slippery as an eel and my bottles of whiskey went on, and my loads of ties and timber came off, until every officer and preacher in the place got ...

— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson

... light, was scarcely so brilliant as the earth. The rain of the preceding night had frozen as it fell, and, by that simple magic, had wrought wonders. The trees were hung with diamonds and many-colored gems; the houses were overlaid with silver, and the streets paved with slippery brightness; a frigid glory was flung over all familiar things, from the cottage chimney to the steeple of the meeting-house, that gleamed upward to the sky. This living world, where we sit by our firesides, or go forth to meet beings like ourselves, ...

— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... this connection of the two clauses we just come to the general principle which lies here, that the true source of steadfastness in character and conduct, of victory over temptation, and of standing fast in slippery places, is simple reliance, or, to use the New Testament word, 'faith,' 'Believe and ye shall be established.' Put out your hand and clasp Him, and He puts out His hand and steadies you. But all the steadfastness and strength come from the mighty Hand that is outstretched, ...

— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... get out that way now, Miss Marjorie,' said Neil; 'and in any case it would be too slippery that the cliffs would be. I will pe knowing an opening leading to the moor, where it's not difficult to climb up. ...

— The Adventure League • Hilda T. Skae

... pray. There is a heavy sea on still and the deck is very slippery. I will call Captain Trejago if you will ...

— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths

... and the prudence with which you have acted, by forsaking your debauchery; a conduct rarely to be met with in young persons; and I esteem you the more for being steady to your resolution. It was a slippery path you trod in, and I cannot but admire your self-command, that, after having seen the end of your ready money, you could so far refrain as not to enter upon your rents, or even your estate. In short, I must own, I envy your situation. ...

— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 3 • Anon.

... expeditions into the darkness, and the quantity the Swede brought back always made me feel that he took an absurdly long time finding it; for the fact was I did not care much about being left alone, and yet it always seemed to be my turn to grub about among the bushes or scramble along the slippery banks in the moonlight. The long day's battle with wind and water—such wind and such water!—had tired us both, and an early bed was the obvious program. Yet neither of us made the move for the tent. We lay there, tending the fire, ...

— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various

... hundred feet from the river; and the only road that was visible was one that led upward, apparently a work of art. Here the Greeks endeavoured to cross, 6. but as, on making trial, the water rose above their breasts, and the bed of the river was rough with large and slippery stones, and as it was impossible for them to carry their arms in the water, or, if they attempted to do so, the river swept them away, (while, if any of them took their arms on their heads, they became exposed to the arrows and other missiles of ...

— The First Four Books of Xenophon's Anabasis • Xenophon

... reservations. It was considered that the stories had gathered bulk on their travels. The matter died down and a lull followed. Then Eugene Sue's "Wandering Jew" appeared, and made great talk for a while. One character in it was a chief of Thugs—"Feringhea"—a mysterious and terrible Indian who was as slippery and sly as a serpent, and as deadly; and he stirred up the Thug interest once more. But it did not last. It presently died again ...

— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... and absorbing, that I could scarcely feel weariness. The weather for six out of the seven weeks was very rainy and bad generally; but I am and was well, very well—not very strong, yet walking to Gatava and back, five or six miles, on slippery and wet paths, and schooling and ...

— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge

... lake with Una. A heavy rain, some days ago, has melted a good deal of the snow on the intervening descent between our house and the lake; but many drifts, depths, and levels yet remain; and there is a frozen crust, sufficient to bear a man's weight, and very slippery. Adown the slopes there are tiny rivulets, which exist only for the winter. Bare, brown spaces of grass here and there, but still so infrequent as only to diversify the scene a little. In the woods, rocks emerging, and, where there is a slope immediately towards the lake, the snow ...

— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... the Pericardium, or the Case and Liquor above-mentioned, we came to the Heart itself. The outward Surface of it was extremely slippery, and the Mufro, or Point, so very cold withal, that, upon endeavouring to take hold of it it glided through the Fingers like a ...

— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... it was gliding spirally along one of the horizontal branches of the willow, and coming, as it were, from the nests of the birds. Her eyes, however, had scarce rested upon it, before its long slippery body passed from the branch, and the next moment it was crawling head-foremost down the ...

— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid

... through the wretched management of everything that depended upon head-quarters; their ranks rallied and poured deadly volleys of Minie bullets upon the masses of the enemy struggling with the French. The slopes of the plateau were strewn with dead, and slippery with gore; the Russians, foiled everywhere, retreated. The French, fresh for pursuit, would not pursue unless the weary guardsmen led the van. Canrobert, the successor of Arnaud in command of the French army, complimented the British, but did not act heartily with them. The services of Sir Richard ...

— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... bethought himself of former days, when he walked the glad young earth in company with great Odin. And among other things he remembered how he had once borrowed the magic net of Ran, the Ocean-queen, and had caught with it the dwarf Andvari, disguised, as he himself now was, in the form of a slippery salmon. ...

— Hero Tales • James Baldwin

... The mourners passed into it through a side-door, while the corpse was being nailed in its coffin, in the vestry. A fine rain moistened the atmosphere; we felt cold; the earth was slippery and the grave-diggers who had not completed their task, found it hard to raise the heavy soil, for it stuck to their shovels. In the background, the women kneeling in the grass, throwing back their hoods and their big white ...

— Over Strand and Field • Gustave Flaubert

... milky mist hung over the town. Svidrigailov walked along the slippery dirty wooden pavement towards the Little Neva. He was picturing the waters of the Little Neva swollen in the night, Petrovsky Island, the wet paths, the wet grass, the wet trees and bushes and at last the bush.... He ...

— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... minutes yet of the turn of the tide. I suggested waiting through this interval on the beach, instead of on the wet and slippery surface of the rocks. Having reached the dry sand, I prepared to sit down; and, greatly to my surprise, Betteredge prepared ...

— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins

... have been in thrall to six haircloth chairs, a slippery sofa to match, and a very cold, marble-top center table, from the beginning of this century down to comparatively recent times. In all the best homes there was also a marble mantel to match the center table; on one end of this ...

— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard

... among the reeds and the huge carven leaves of the water plants, and the snake-headed buds lolling upon them with the slippery half-sinister look that water-flowers have, as though their cold secret life belonged to the hidden water world and not to ours. But now the boat was touching the ...

— The Ninth Vibration And Other Stories • L. Adams Beck

... climb the next intervening ascent; but I soon found that I had better have stuck to my horse, for the immensity of the surrounding objects had deceived me as to the distance, and the ground was so steep and slippery that, unprepared as I was for such an attempt, I could not keep my footing. When about half-way up, I looked ruefully round and saw steeps above and below covered with ice and snow and loose earth. I could not get back, and did not know how to get on. I felt like the man who went ...

— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville

... Down the slippery slopes of Myrtle, Where the early pumpkins blow, To the calm and silent sea Fled the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo. There, beyond the Bay of Gurtle, Lay a large and lively Turtle. "You're the Cove," he said, "for me; On your back beyond the sea, ...

— The Best Nonsense Verses • Various

... was but little frozen, and the snow made the roads more slippery than ever. But the rough-shod roan handled his feet dexterously and with a playful and somewhat self-righteous air, as though he said: "Didn't I do it handsomely that time?" Down slippery hills, through deep mud-holes ...

— The Hoosier Schoolmaster - A Story of Backwoods Life in Indiana • Edward Eggleston

... to[o] weak she thought for's grave; A fatal dose of quicksilver then she Mingles to hast his double destinie; Now whilst within themselves they are at strife, The deadly potion yields to that of life, And straight from th' hollow stomack both retreat To th' slippery pipes known to digested meat. Strange care o' th' gods the murth'resse doth avail! So, when fates please, ...

— Lucasta • Richard Lovelace

... athlete,—nay, even as a dancer, and would receive in every case all the crowns intended for victors. Dost know why that monkey grew hoarse? Yesterday he wanted to equal our Paris in dancing, and danced for us the adventures of Leda, during which he sweated and caught cold. He was as wet and slippery as an eel freshly taken from water. He changed masks one after another, whirled like a spindle, waved his hands like a drunken sailor, till disgust seized me while looking at that great stomach and those slim ...

— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... crossed every moment by marshy hollows. A slope, slippery as glass with the frost, hurried the carriages into them and there they stuck; to draw them out it was necessary to climb the opposite ascent by an icy road, where the horses, whose shoes were worn quite smooth, could not obtaining ...

— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur

... entrance sat Grumsquutzy, in his robes of office and surrounded by an armed guard. At a little distance stood two great black slaves, each bearing a scourge of thongs. All about them the floor was slippery with blood. While I wondered at all this two policemen entered, having between them one whom I recognized as a professional Friend of the People, a great orator, keenly concerned for the interests of Labor. Shown the inscription and unable or unwilling to answer, ...

— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce

... They went down the slippery steps to the boat, and then the shore glided slowly past them as they pushed off into the stream ...

— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini

... never to do anything which he could possibly avoid. He always seemed to me a sort of great jellyfish, looking as if he had a mission to accomplish, but, on closer examination, proving to be without consistency, and slippery. His theory apparently was, "No act, no responsibility"; and throughout the Russian Empire this principle of action, or, rather, of inaction, appears to ...

— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White

... to be full of disappointments. She had retired to her room while I was in the library, and I lost the interview from which I expected so much. "The woman is slippery as an eel," I inwardly commented, pacing the hall in my chagrin. "Wrapped in mystery, she expects me to feel for her the respect due to one of frank and ...

— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green

... it would but it's not an easy business," said Peachy gloomily. "Mabel Hughes is an extremely slippery young person, and she generally manages to keep out of open trouble. I don't suppose any of the teachers, or even the prefects, have the least idea what she's ...

— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil

... garden mould. In the space of one minute, on the wood of my table, they cover a distance of eight inches. The pace is no swifter on a horizontal bed of sifted mould. A strip of glass reduces the distance covered by one half. The slippery surface only half paralyses this ...

— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre

... the green bear hide—always a slippery and awkward thing to pack—Moise now showed a little device often practised, as he said, among the Crees. He cut two sharpened sticks, each about a couple of feet in length, and placing these down on the hide, folded the hide around them, ...

— The Young Alaskans on the Trail • Emerson Hough

... cruising in its vicinity. We lay off and on, coquetting with the little beauty, while one of our boats pulled up to it, and threw a lariat over a glittering peak that flamed in the sun like a torch. Then we drew in the slack and made fast, while a half dozen of our men mounted the slippery mass, armed with ropes and axes, and began to hack off big chunks, which were in due season ...

— Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska • Charles Warren Stoddard

... for the dance, Pete went beyond the limit, however. He had found a pail of soft-soap in the shed and while the crowd was out of the barn, playing a "round game" in the yard while it was being swept, Pete slunk in with the soap and a swab, and managed to spread a good deal of the slippery ...

— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd

... That is quite wrong. It rests on the primary fallacy that gates are meant to be opened, whereas they are really meant to be kept shut. What actually happens when you want to open one is that you plunge halfway through a deep quagmire, climb on to a slippery stone, wrestle with a piece of hoop-iron, some barbed wire and some pieces of furze, lift the gate up by the bottom bar and wade through the rest of the quagmire ...

— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, April 21, 1920 • Various

... Are ye indeed? (Aside.) How smoothly to the air Slides that word father from his slippery tongue. Come hither, daughter, let me gaze on thee, For I have dreamed that thou wert beautiful, So beautiful our very duke did stop To smile upon thy brightness! What say'st thou, Bernardo, didst ...

— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various

... Aldercliffe from Pine Lea darkness had fallen, and he was compelled to move cautiously along the narrow, curving trail. How black the night was! A storm must be brewing, thought he, as he glanced up into the starless heavens. Stumbling over the rough and slippery ground on he went. Then suddenly he rounded a turn in the path ...

— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett

... say that they were taken for the most part under very unfavourable circumstances, in dark caves lighted by one, or sometimes by two candles, with a temperature varying from slightly above to slightly below the freezing-point, and with no surer foot-hold than that afforded by slippery slopes of ice and chaotic blocks of stone. In all cases, errors are due to want of skill, not of honesty; and I hope that they do not generally lie on the ...

— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne

... fate had defied, That wrought out from fortune what favor denied, Standing aloof from the world in his pride; The niche he has carved on fame's slippery wall Friends are proclaiming with heraldry-call. His Croesus-bright scepter has magical sway, Yester's indifference solicits to-day. His daring his triumph, how daily he fares, Every one knows, ...

— Debris - Selections from Poems • Madge Morris

... other pleasures as well. The creeks were frozen over and there were fascinating slides,—long, slippery places like a sheet of glass,—and the triumph was to slide the whole length and keep one's head well up. You could spread your arms out like a windmill, only you might come in contact with some other arms, and the great thing was to preserve a ...

— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... best.... Let us march," said Gaston de Foix, Duc de Nemours, "in the name of God and my lord St. Denis." Drums, trumpets, and bugles sounded an alarm. The enemy replied with a burst of artillery, and the attacking party from the citadel began their descent down the hill, where the ground was very slippery, for there had been rain in the night. The general and many other knights took off their broad, plated shoes to gain a firmer hold with the felt slippers worn under the armour, for no one wished to be left behind. At the first rampart ...

— Bayard: The Good Knight Without Fear And Without Reproach • Christopher Hare

... against him who would hurt "one of these little ones" glows and scorches in His words! Is this a word for any of us? Is there one among us who is tempting a brother man to dishonesty, to drink, to lust; who is pushing some thoughtless girl down the steep and slippery slope which ends—we know where? Then let him stop and listen, not to me, but to Christ. Never, I think, did He speak with such solemn, heart-shaking emphasis, and He says that it were better a man should die, that he should die this night, die the most ...

— The Teaching of Jesus • George Jackson

... the bulk of their carcass. Their streets were paved with polished marble; which seemed strange amongst a people so incurious, both because the workmanship was troublesome, and there might be danger in its being slippery. But the true reason of it was, that they might not be forced to lift their feet higher than ordinary by the inequality of the pavement, and likewise that the chairs of the senators might the more easily be pushed forward; for they never go on foot, or on horseback, nor even in ...

— Ideal Commonwealths • Various

... to this summit was not good, but that down the other side was bad. The irregular, great blocks of limestone, covered with the smooth, dry, slippery coating, caused constant stumbling to our poor animals. From this valley we rose onto a yet grander range. Here we had our first Mixe experience. At the very summit, where the road became for a little time level, ...

— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr

... ways lest he should stumble, and casting his eyes down, kills two birds with one stone. He is in deep meditation about a contract for a load of deals, and at the same time regards his steps, for the ways of the world are slippery. His digestion is not good, and he eats pickles, for the vinegar shows in his face. Like Jehu Judd, he hates "fiddling and dancing, and serving the devil," and it is lucky he has a downcast look, for here come two girls that would ...

— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... evident that he thought so. When Henry the Fifth united, by act of Parliament, the estates of his mother to the duchy, he had the same predilection with his father to the root of his family honors, and the same policy in enlarging the sphere of a possible retreat from the slippery royalty of the two great crowns he held. All this was changed by Edward the Fourth. He had no such family partialities, and his policy was the reverse of that of Henry the Fourth and Henry the Fifth. He accordingly again united the Duchy of Lancaster to the crown. ...

— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... below the gorge I took to the stream and waded. It was slippery, dangerous work, for the current tore about my legs and threatened to upset me. After a little I crossed to the left bank. Here the slope of the canyon was thick with grass that hid my tracks. It was a long climb up to the level. Upon reaching it ...

— The Young Forester • Zane Grey

... as I fear you are a slippery snake, as well as a roaring lion," said Tabitha, in grim defiance of natural history. "Answer my question, ...

— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt

... world. And then, too, Charlotte Bronte seems to me to have had an incomparable gift of animating a natural scene with vivid human emotions. The frost-bound day, when the still earth holds its breath, when the springs are congealed, and the causeway is black with slippery ice, in that hour when Jane Eyre first sees Mr. Rochester; and again the scene in the summer garden, just before the thunderstorm, when Mr. Rochester calls her to look at the great hawk-moth drinking from the flower chalice. ...

— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson

... mind and bring Jenny safe home," the mother said—"don't stay To pull a bough or berry by the way: And when you come to cross the ford, hold fast Your little sister's hand, till you're quite past— That plank's so crazy, and so slippery (If not o'erflowed) the stepping-stones will be. But you're good children—steady as old folk, I'd trust ye any where." Then Lizzy's cloak, A good grey duffle, lovingly she tied, And amply little Jenny's lack supplied ...

— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various

... and bare on the mountain-side, though there were still patches of grass, such as the flocks liked, that had grown since the hay was cut. The frost of the night made the stone slippery, and even the irons gripped it with difficulty, and there was a strong wind rising like a giant's breath, and blowing his small horn lantern to and fro. Now and then he quaked a little with fear—not fear of the night or the mountains, but of strange spirits ...

— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various

... Grisons bears, rejoicing in their exercise, exhilarated with the tingling noise of beaten metal. We reached the first room safely, guided by firm-footed Christian, whose one candle just defined the rough walls and the slippery steps. There we found a band of boys, pulling ropes that set the bells in motion. But our destination was not reached. One more aerial ladder, perpendicular in darkness, brought us swiftly to the home of sound. It is a small square chamber, where the bells are hung, filled with the interlacement ...

— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds

... never before formed an acquaintance with a female possessing so many attractions, and she gazed at her with wonder and admiration, not unmixed with a sentiment of tenderness and pity, as she thought of life's slippery paths, and of the injurious influences of worldly ...

— Woman As She Should Be - or, Agnes Wiltshire • Mary E. Herbert

... possible. A young pupil wrote of a party in the woods. The girls had found pleasant seats in a car and were chatting about their friends, when they felt a sudden lurch, and soon one of the party was besmeared by slippery, sticky whites of eggs. Now, if eggs were in the habit of clinging to the roofs of cars and breaking at unfortunate moments, there would be no need of any explanation; but as the cook forgot to boil the eggs and the girl had put ...

— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster

... was exciting, for they had to hold the slippery tree on the sleigh and stay on themselves. As Janet was driving at top speed this was not easy, but they reached the little church at last and carried the tree triumphantly into the ...

— Phyllis - A Twin • Dorothy Whitehill

... cove or harbour, through a narrow entrance which put them in mind of a huge mouse-trap. The boats had muffled oars; not a sound was heard; but had any one been on the lookout, the phosphorescent flashes as the blades touched the water would have betrayed them. The boats reached some black slippery rocks. The crews, led by their officers, leaped out, leaving two boat-keepers in each; and, holding their cutlasses in their teeth, away they scrambled up the ...

— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston

... daughter of the house for permission to go into an inner chamber and see her mother. It was granted, and we went into a sort of saloon, over-looking the Neckar; very small, very bright, and very close. The floor was slippery with polish; long narrow pieces of looking-glass against the walls reflected the perpetual motion of the river opposite; a white porcelain stove, with some old-fashioned ornaments of brass about it; a sofa, covered with Utrecht velvet, a table before it, and a piece of worsted-worked ...

— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell

... part even of our living beings; we slightly remember our felicities, and the smartest strokes of affliction leave but short smart upon us. Sense endureth no extremities, and sorrows destroy us or themselves. To weep into stones are fables. Afflictions induce callosities; miseries are slippery, or fall like snow upon us, which notwithstanding is no unhappy stupidity. To be ignorant of evils to come, and forgetful of evils past, is a merciful provision in nature, whereby we digest the mixture ...

— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey

... cartridge-pouches and knapsacks with the intention of giving imprisonment to those who had not the right quantity of cartridges and iron rations. In the evening we set off, laughing and singing, along the great curves of the road. At night we arrived swaying with fatigue and savagely silent, at a slippery and interminable ascent which stood out against stormy rain-clouds as heavy as dung-hills. Many dark masses stumbled and fell with a crash of accoutrements on that huge sloping sewer. As they swarmed up the chaos of oblique darkness which pushed them back, the men gave signs ...

— Light • Henri Barbusse

... few of the many arguments I usually employ to establish my point; but there is no pinning my friend down in an argument. He is such a slippery fellow that he wriggles off the pin and declares that these same orators, whose speeches I instance, spoke at less length than their published addresses seem to show. I hold the contrary to be the case, and there are many speeches ...

— The Letters of the Younger Pliny - Title: The Letters of Pliny the Younger - - Series 1, Volume 1 • Pliny the Younger

... and loved their own Big Sandy River. They rode their rafts fearlessly, leaping daringly from log to log to make fast a dog chain, even jumping from one slippery, water-soaked raft to another to capture with spike pole or grappling hook a log that had broken loose. They had not the slightest fear when a raft buckled or broke away from the rest and was swept by swift current to midstream. ...

— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas

... been built over the rock by the "High Rock Congress Spring Company." This company was formed in 1866, and was inaugurated under favorable auspices and with brilliant prospects of success. But though founded on a rock, it was not successful in withstanding the storms. Whether the rock was too slippery, or the Spring rains too severe, or what was the slip-up, or rather slip-down, we do not presume to say, but the company failed, and the spring was sold at auction during the present month ...

— Saratoga and How to See It • R. F. Dearborn

... in his office was run over by a cab one slippery day, and all but killed. Piers visited him in the hospital, thus seeing for the first time the interior of one of those houses of pain, which he always disliked even to pass. The experience did not help to brighten ...

— The Crown of Life • George Gissing

... of their conversation had quitted the station, and Sir Hubert's respect for Mr. Winter's powers as a sleuth-hound yielded to anxiety lest the slippery Frenchman might vanish once and ...

— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy

... last to find the end of her hapless life. But when she came to the region which borders on the cliff that was showed to her, she understood the deadly nature of her task. From a great rock, steep and slippery, a horrible river of water poured forth, falling straightway by a channel exceeding narrow into the unseen gulf below. And lo! creeping from the rocks on either hand, angry serpents, with their long necks and sleepless eyes. The very waters found ...

— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater

... the toil and the excitement; climbing the bed of the stream was no child's play, for ugly corners had to be passed, slippery rocks to be skirted, and many breakneck leaps to be effected. Her spirits rose as the spray from little falls brushed her face and the thick screen of the birches caught in her hair. When she reached a vantage-rock and looked down on the chain of pools and rapids ...

— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan

... unloading from the bridge. He greeted Cap'n Mike cordially. The captain introduced the two boys and Lake shook hands without taking his eyes from the unloading operation. Rick saw a scoop drop into the hold and come up with a slippery half-ton of menhaden. Then it sped along a beam track into the big shed, paused over a wide conveyer belt, lowered to within a few feet of the belt and dumped its load. A clerk just inside the door marked the load on a board. Rick looked for the winch ...

— Smugglers' Reef • John Blaine

... effect; all the troops could act at once; and in case of a miscarriage, the retreat was secure and open, at least for a certain time of the tide. These, however, seemed to be over-balanced by other considerations. The enemy were posted on a commanding eminence; the beach was covered with deep mud, slippery, and broken into holes and gullies; the hill was steep, and in some places impracticable; the enemy were numerous, and poured in a very severe fire from their intrenchments. Had the attack succeeded, the loss of the English must ...

— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett

... grunted the sergeant. "Been watching all the old crooks since these safes have been popping. Nothin' much on any of them, except this slippery wop, Tony Costello. No, we haven't caught him at anything. Seems to be keeping close and minding his own business. Working in his laboratory. Ought to make a good living if he turned honest; clever guy, he seems. But he's been too prosperous lately. Lots of machinery delivered to his place; we ...

— The Einstein See-Saw • Miles John Breuer

... seen his father go forth and not come back, his mother drop dead from an arquebuse shot as she leaned from the platform of the tower, his little sister fall with a slit throat across the altar steps of the chapel—and he ran, ran for his life, through the slippery streets, over warm twitching bodies, between legs of soldiers carousing, out of the gates, past burning farmsteads, trampled wheat-fields, orchards stripped and broken, till the still woods received him and he fell face down ...

— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton

... caliber of our box. Into one end we would place a flat piece of bark or puncheon, cut round to fit in the bark, which stood on end the same as when on the tree.... A much finer article was made of slippery-elm bark, shaved smooth, with the inside out, bent round and sewed together, where the end of the hoop or main bark lapped over.... This was the finest furniture in a lady's dressing room," and such a cabin and its appointments were splendor and luxury beside those of the very ...

— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells

... He heard the deep behind him, and a cry Before. His own thought drove him like a goad. Dry clashed his harness in the icy caves And barren chasms, and all to left and right The bare black cliff clang'd round him, as he based His feet on juts of slippery crag that rang Sharp-smitten with the dint of armed heels— And on a ...

— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie

... know that the Chinese have ever been distinguished as manufacturers of shoes. It is possible, however, that they excel in making slippers, as they are known to be a very slippery people. ...

— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 16, July 16, 1870 • Various

... and its wares handed out, Mandy noticed, on the deck above, a woman washing a little boy three or four years old. He stood in an old wooden pail, with a rope tied to the handle,—his little white body, all naked and slippery, shining in the sun. One could hardly help noticing him, he screamed so lustily as the water was dashed over ...

— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various

... 31.—Weather very disagreeable; snow six inches deep, and from rain and sleet and thaw and freeze, has formed a hard crust, so as to make bad traveling—in the roads icy and slippery. To-day cloudy, damp and cool. A few days ago the mercury reached 8 degrees below zero, the lowest of the season. It is very hard on stock, and many of the cattle are without shelter, as usual. Accept New Year greetings for all THE ...

— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 3, January 19, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various

... astonishment he did not run, though Dupin was cutting closer and closer through tangled bodies, eager to grapple with his old-time slippery foe. Don Rodrigo raised in his saddle, and looked anxiously in all directions. Suddenly his dark face lighted, and wheeling round, he called to his men, and in his turn strove as furiously to reach the Tiger ...

— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle

... the defender into the attacker. The result of the rally in the last round had convinced his seconds that when it came to give-and-take hitting, their hardy and powerful man was likely to have the better of it. And then on the top of this came the rain. With the slippery grass the superior activity of Wilson would be neutralized, and he would find it harder to avoid the rushes of his opponent. It was in taking advantage of such circumstances that the art of ringcraft lay, and many ...

— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle

... room with high ceiling and wall paper which had defied all the arts of Europe to render interesting in design. Furniture was neither plentiful nor comfortable—a slippery, black horse-hair sofa, a few horse-hair chairs and, at one side of the room, a table and a desk, littered with papers, maps and files. At the table Grant's adjutant, Forbes, sat writing. Facing him was the door ...

— The Littlest Rebel • Edward Peple

... frigged, spending over each other in every direction. Then getting up, Frank withdrew the dildo from the bottom-hole of the suffering girl, substituted his prick, which was slippery with spendings, and commenced to fuck her there, whilst his friend inserted his under one of her extended arms, so that the point rubbed against one of the nipples of ...

— The Power of Mesmerism - A Highly Erotic Narrative of Voluptuous Facts and Fancies • Anonymous

... turn, one night, to go out and borrow a chicken from Mr. Man's roost, and coming home he fell into an old well and lost his chicken. He nearly lost himself, too, for the water was icy cold and Mr. 'Possum thought he would freeze to death before he could climb out, because the rocks were slippery and ...

— Hollow Tree Nights and Days • Albert Bigelow Paine

... walls were dripping with moisture. Presently the passage emerged into a sort of crypt, in which huge masses of masonry supported low arches that in turn carried the cross vaulting. The floor, if it was anything but beaten earth, was slippery with a ...

— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford

... high when we clattered over the slippery paving stones to the north gate of the city. Kalgan is built hard against the Great Wall of China—the first line of defense, the outermost rampart in the colossal structure which for so many centuries protected China from Tartar invasion. Beyond it there ...

— Across Mongolian Plains - A Naturalist's Account of China's 'Great Northwest' • Roy Chapman Andrews

... steadily; but it was all in vain. The hill-side sloped very steeply to the broad bed of willows and reeds far below, making the way very bad for so heavy and inactive a man. Worse still: walking over the short grass in the hot sun had made the bottoms of the monk's sandals as slippery as glass, and so it was that before he had gone far down the slope he began to talk to himself, at first slowly—then quickly—then in a loud excited way—and lastly he uttered a shout and ...

— The King's Sons • George Manville Fenn

... another—let your worship keep count of the goats the fisherman is taking across, for if one escapes the memory there will be an end of the story, and it will be impossible to tell another word of it. To proceed, I must tell you the landing place on the other side was miry and slippery, and the fisherman lost a great deal of time in going and coming; still he returned for another goat, ...

— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra