"Snail" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... contact with civilization; then Cesca, the lean and stoical product of an ancient and terrible savagery; and Alchise, her mate. Finally Molly—squat, dirty Molly—the stupid, squalid aborigine, as distinct from Cesca's type as is the brown snail from ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow
... braid brain complain daily dairy daisy drain dainty explain fail fain gain gait gaiter grain hail jail laid maid mail maim nail paid pail paint plain prairie praise quail rail rain raise raisin remain sail saint snail sprain stain straight strain tail train ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... the material! I grant you I may die any day like a rat on a housetop, with only a bundle of musty papers, the tags of broken conversations, and one or two dead, distorted nerves. That is our common risk. But I shall accomplish as much of the road as God permits the snail, and I shall have moulded something; life will have justified itself to me, or I to life. But that is not ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick
... I'm ready, you unnerstand. My house ain't much for to see, sir, but it's hearty at your service if ever you should come along with Mas'r Davy to see it. I'm a reg'lar Dodman, I am,' said Mr. Peggotty, by which he meant snail, and this was in allusion to his being slow to go, for he had attempted to go after every sentence, and had somehow or other come back again; 'but I wish you both well, and I ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... is represented as challenging Cupid at archery. To challenge at the flight is, I believe, to wager who shall shoot the arrow furthest without any particular mark. To challenge at the bird-bolt, seems to mean the same as to challenge at children's archery, with snail arrows such as are discharged at birds. In Twelfth Night Lady Olivia opposes a bird-bolt to a cannon-bullet, the lightest to ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... solely upon details of adult structure, young crabs pass through a stage when to all intents and purposes they are counterparts of lobsters. Even the twisted hermit crab, which has a soft-skinned hinder part coiled to fit the curve of the snail shell used as a protection, is symmetrical and lobster-like when it is ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton
... shameful things he has done in all these years. There is never a year goes by without his doing something dreadful; and he has made everybody miserable at one time or other by killing their friends or relations, from the snail to the partridge. He is quite merciless, and spares no one; why, his own children are afraid of him, and it is believed that he has pecked several of them to death, though it is hushed up; but people talk about it all the same, sometimes. As for the way he has behaved ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... by his day's work and MARY'S stupidity, from now on absolutely brutish]. You've had time to cook a dozen meals. You're as slow as a snail. What did you do all the time we were in ...
— Washington Square Plays - Volume XX, The Drama League Series of Plays • Various
... forgotten friend, a Snail, Beneath his house, with slimy trail, Crawls o'er the grass; whom, when he spies, In wrath he ...
— Favourite Fables in Prose and Verse • Various
... those shells fell and exploded, earth and stone and iron melted into dust under the terrific force of the exploding gases, and the air-ships, moving with a velocity compared with which the utmost speed of the aerostats was as a snail's pace, flitted hither and thither wherever a battery got into action, and destroyed it before the ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith
... quick and brave. Onward he dashed, never for an instant taking his eagle eye from the tracks which formed his compass. Think not that such tracks are easily traced. None but a practised and ready eye can follow them to any advantageous end. To trace them even at a snail's pace, for an unpractised eye, is like the child putting pen and ink to paper through his first copy-book of penmanship. Many and many an awful blot and horribly crooked line will doubtless carry the simile fully and strikingly ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... tributaries, establishing it as the best watered country encountered in our long overland cruise. Besides the splendid watercourses which marked that section, numerous wagontrails, leading into the hills, were peopled with freighters. Long ox trains, moving at a snail's pace, crept over hill and plain, the common carrier between the mines and the outside world. The fascination of the primal land was there; the buttes stood like sentinels, guarding a king's domain, while the palisaded cliffs frowned down, as if erected ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams
... disobey me?" asked Benassis. "I shall not bring you any more rice pudding nor snail broth! No more fresh dates and white bread for you! So you want to die and break your poor mother's heart, ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... hail bail flail slay fray nail bait frail vain mail gray clay paid dray bray main wail pray raise saint stray snail faint staid away paint faith train gayly spray chain plain maid stain strain waist braid drain grain praise strait twain claim ...
— The Beacon Second Reader • James H. Fassett
... land, flashing colours livelier than the spring-meadows bordering their line of passage. Guy, with a nod for all, and a greeting for the best-disposed, pushed on toward the van, till the gathering block compelled him to adopt the snail's pace of the advance party, and gave him work enough to keep his two horses from being jammed with the mass. Now and then he cast a weather-eye on the heavens, and was soon confirmed in an opinion he had repeatedly ejaculated, that ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... a dun? ducked by the Goody from thine own window, when "creeping like snail unwillingly" to morning ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... could, from the resources at hand. To make blue, he pounded up a piece of an old stone he had brought from Canterbury. Gilding was done by making gold-leaf out of real gold. The Tyrian purple was made from a gastropod of the seas near Byzantium, and a little snail-like mollusk of Ireland would serve to make a crimson like it. Thinning it, the painter could make pink. There was no vermilion to be had, and red lead must be used for that color and made by roasting white ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... head raised by means of a turned-down chair, and here I was reposing comfortably when the brother arrived. It was late in the forenoon when the minister reached home, his rickety wagon creaking through the snow, and drawn at a snail's pace by a long-furred, knock-kneed horse. The tall but not very clerical figure was wrapped in a shawl and swathed round the throat with many turns of a woolen tippet. The daughter ran out with eagerness to greet her father and tell of the wonderful arrival. I was received with genuine ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... helped them. Immediately afterwards, however, the obscurity was enveloping. Their faces were wet and shiny with moisture. Even the fingers of Lane's gloves which gripped the wheel were sodden. He proceeded at a snail's pace, keeping always on the inside of the road and only a few inches from the wall or bank. Once he lost his way and his front wheel struck a small stump, but they were going too slowly for disaster. Another time he failed to follow the turn of the road and found himself in a rough cart track. ...
— Mr. Grex of Monte Carlo • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... eight thousand francs a year, is nothing at all towards buying Roguin's practice. Little Xandrot, as we call him, thinks, like all the rest of the world, that we are richer than we are. If his father, that big farmer who is as close as a snail, won't sell a hundred thousand francs worth of land Xandrot can't be a notary, for Roguin's practice is worth four or five hundred thousand. If Crottat does not pay half down, how could he negotiate the affair? ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... with the racing motor turned out to be a light ambulance of a popular Detroit make. Its speeding engine was pure camouflage for its slow progress. It bubbled and steamed at the radiator cap as it pushed along at almost a snail's pace. ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... on, his local interests revived. Whenever he went out he could see the island that was once his home lying like a great snail upon the sea across the bay. It was the spring of the year; local steamers had begun to run, and he was never tired of standing on the thinly occupied deck of one of these as it skirted the island and ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... he flipped a rosebud covered with blight, kicked off a snail which was crawling on the path; then, halfway down the path, he suddenly raised his head and gave ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin
... Zoology and Comparative Anatomy in this country by making use of a carefully selected series of animals. His 'types' were the Rat, the Common Pigeon, the Frog, the Perch, the Crayfish, Blackbeetle, Anodon, Snail, Earthworm, Leech, Tapeworm. He had a series of dissections of these mounted, also loose dissections and elaborate manuscript descriptions. The student went through this series, dissecting fresh specimens ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... that place from crown to base, and I hit the homeward trail. Ah, God! it was good, though my eyes were blurred, and I crawled like a sickly snail. In that vast white world where the silent sky communes with the silent snow, In hunger and cold and misery I wandered to and fro. But the Lord took pity on my pain, and He led me to the sea, And some ice-bound whalers heard my moan, and they fed and sheltered me. They fed the feeble scarecrow ...
— Ballads of a Cheechako • Robert W. Service
... was aroused. It did not know how far the Republicans were prepared to go in their drive for action, so on the day of this flurry in the House the snail-like Rules Committee suddenly met in answer to the call of its chairman, Mr. Pou, and by a vote of 6 to 5 decided to report favorably on the resolution providing for a Woman Suffrage Committee in the House "after all pending war measures have been ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... Seeds planted. Beautiful country. Ride westward. A chopped log. Magnetic hill. Singular scenery. Snail-shells. Cheering prospect westward. A new chain of hills. A nearer mountain. Vistas of green. Gibson finds water. Turtle backs. Ornamented Troglodytes' caves. Water and emus. Beef-wood-trees. Grassy lawns. Gum creek. Purple vetch. ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... guilty. At other times, a bar of red hot iron was passed along the leg, or the arm was thrust into scalding water, and if the natural effect followed, the person's head was immediately struck off. Snail shells, applied to the temples, if they stuck, inferred guilt. When a dispute arose between man and man, the plan was, to place shells on the heads of both, and make them stoop, when he, from off whose head the ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... The point was one on which Stevenson himself felt strongly. In a letter of instructions to his wife found among his posthumous papers he writes: "It is never worth while to inflict pain upon a snail for any literary purpose; and where events may appear to be favourable to me and contrary to others, I would rather be misunderstood than cause a pang to any one whom I have known, far less whom I have loved." Whether an editor or biographer would be justified in carrying out this ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... apprehend or apply that little axiom? The Duchess of Portland killed three thousand snails in order that she might complete the shell-work for which she received so much credit; Dulcie would not have put her foot voluntarily on a single snail for ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... really fundamental resemblances which they present. But a man and a fish are members of the same sub-kingdom 'Vertebrata', because they are much more like one another than either of them is to a worm, or a snail, or any member of the other sub-kingdoms. For similar reasons men and horses are arranged as members of the same Class, 'Mammalia'; men and apes as members of the same Order, 'Primates'; and if there were any animals more like men than they were like any of the ...
— A Critical Examination Of The Position Of Mr. Darwin's Work, "On The Origin Of Species," In Relation To The Complete Theory Of The Causes Of The Phenomena Of Organic Nature • Thomas H. Huxley
... after goat-feathers, and in the meantime Arnold Bennett probably wrote three novels of several hundred thousand words each, gained an international reputation, and passed me on the road to fame like an airplane passing a snail. George Ade kept pegging away at his "Fables" with the regularity of a day laborer, and Peter Finley Dunne ground out his "Mister Dooley" ...
— Goat-Feathers • Ellis Parker Butler
... his Excellence Baron de Goldburg, Leading the Dowager Duchess of Snail; Feathers and fringe on the top of her bonnet, Roses and rings on the end ...
— Five Mice in a Mouse-trap - by the Man in the Moon. • Laura E. Richards
... are the winged wardens of your farms, Who from the cornfields drive the insidious foe, And from your harvest keep a hundred harms; Even the blackest of them all, the crow, Renders good service as your man-at-arms, Crushing the beetle in his coat of mail, And crying havoc on the slug and snail." —FROM "THE ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph, Volume 1, Number 2, February, 1897 • anonymous
... slowly grazing past the wood, I resolved to wait for them to pass on before leaving my concealment. I sat down and tried to be patient, but the brutes were in no hurry, and went on skirting the wood at a snail's pace. It was about six o'clock before the last stragglers had left, and then I ventured out from my hiding-place, hungry as a wolf and afraid of being overtaken by night before finding any human habitation. I had ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... a kind of snail-train they call the express. These Italian trains go at about the rate of ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... passing outside sent a moving square of light through the high grating across the floor of the cellar. The damp walls became dimly visible with shining snail-tracks on them, and his great form leaning negligently upon a cask, his hand arrested in the pulling of his long beard, his eyes gleaming upon her, sardonic and amused. The light twisted round ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... I, lass; an' if thou be not my wife ere that snail-coming new moon doth thrust out her horns, my name is not Hacket, ...
— A Brother To Dragons and Other Old-time Tales • Amelie Rives
... has ever been flourished in American politics. The advance made in this direction is small compared to the actual needs of an efficient national organization, and considering the mass of interest and prejudice which it must continue to overcome, it can hardly continue to progress at more than a snail's pace. The great obstacle to American national fulfillment must always be the danger that the American people will merely succumb to the demands of their local and private interests and will permit their political craft to drift into a compromising situation—from which the penalties of rescue ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... sweet responsive sympathy of tones; So the fair flower expands it's lucid form To meet the sun, and shuts it to the storm;— 15 For thee my borders nurse the fragrant wreath, My fountains murmur, and my zephyrs breathe; Slow slides the painted snail, the gilded fly Smooths his fine down, to charm thy curious eye; On twinkling fins my pearly nations play, 20 Or win with sinuous train their trackless way; My plumy pairs in gay embroidery dress'd Form with ingenious bill the pensile nest, To Love's sweet notes ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... was a snail with a broken shell; for him they built a beautiful little house, and he made little rush brooms and sold them to the passers-by; but he lived ever after close ...
— The Grey Brethren and Other Fragments in Prose and Verse • Michael Fairless
... Like house-encumber'd Snail we creep; While far ahead the women keep, For when to the devil's house we speed, By a thousand steps they ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... They have their exits and their entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts: His acts being seven ages. At first the infant, Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms: And then, the whining school-boy with his satchel, And shining morning-face, creeping like snail Unwillingly to school. And then, the lover; Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad Made to his mistress' eye-brow. Then, a soldier; Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard, Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel; Seeking the bubble reputation Even in the cannon's ...
— The Art Of Poetry An Epistle To The Pisos - Q. Horatii Flacci Epistola Ad Pisones, De Arte Poetica. • Horace
... system the sun could not appear to it larger than the blaze of a tallow candle. To us it was wholly incredible how, in that dim remoteness, it could still hold true to the central force and follow at a snail-pace, yet with unvarying exactitude, its stupendous orbit. Clemens said that heretofore Neptune, the planetary outpost of our system, had been called the tortoise of the skies, but that comparatively it was rapid in its motion, ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... was a hansom drawn by a snail. The automobile, running without lights, went no faster, kept a certain distance behind us all the way from the Place Pigalle to the apartment of Mademoiselle Reneaux. What have you to say to that? Furthermore, when Mademoiselle ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... conducted tours of the grass. After the experience of Gootes and myself, parachute landings had been ruled out as too hazardous, but someone happily thought of the use of snowshoes and it was on these clumsy means that tourists, at a high cost and at less than snail's pace, tramped wonderingly over the ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... men, to one so bound by such a vow, And women were as phantoms. O, my brother, Why wilt thou shame me to confess to thee How far I faltered from my quest and vow? For after I had lain so many nights A bedmate of the snail and eft and snake, In grass and burdock, I was changed to wan And meagre, and the vision had not come; And then I chanced upon a goodly town With one great dwelling in the middle of it; Thither I made, and there was I disarmed By maidens each as fair as any flower: But ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... moving in a tiny ebullition of dust along the white trail. It looks so small. It moves so slowly, crawling, seemingly, at a snail's pace. It is ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... row?" shouted back the delinquent, hearing her at last, and wriggling himself in from the window like a snail withdrawing itself into its shell, turning round the while his face, slightly flushed with the exertion, to ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson
... you can't put all boys to one trade, nor send all girls to the same service. One chap will make a London clerk, and another will do better to plough, and sow, and reap, and mow, and be a farmer's boy. It's no use forcing them; a snail will never run a race, nor a ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... caterpillars: that is the true vocation of the Golden Gardener. It is annoying that it can give us but little or no assistance in ridding us of another plague of the kitchen-garden: the snail. The slime of the snail is offensive to the beetle; it is safe from the latter unless crippled, half crushed, or projecting from the shell. Its relatives, however, do not share this dislike. The horny Procrustes, the great Scarabicus, entirely black and larger ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... extraordinary variety—we have bunches of horns great and small, and bunches of imitation centipedes, and bunches of mock holly leaves, prickly coils and velvety balls; mimic concertinas, and bits of quaint embroidery; imitation snail-shells, croziers, pods with frills at the seams, spiked caskets with curious indentations, clusters of stars, bladders like soft paper, and plaited spirals wound into a tiny cocoanut, that, untwisted, ...
— Parables of the Christ-life • I. Lilias Trotter
... to take your liking me, without examining too curiously into the materials it is made of. Only we need not walk at a snail's' pace.' ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... down the hill at a snail's pace, I was overtaken by a countryman on his way to church. "Ye'll hae come," he said, addressing me, "wi' the great man last night?" "I came in the steamer," I replied, "with your Member, Mr. Dundas." "O, aye," rejoined the man; "but I'm no sure he'll be our Member next time. The Voluntaries ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... went to kill a snail; The best man among them durst not touch her tail. She put out her horns like a little Kyloe cow. Run, tailors, run, or she'll kill you all ...
— The National Nursery Book - With 120 illustrations • Unknown
... it very effectively did. I reported next morning that the only chance of seeing what it was was to go out in the daytime; and it was suspicious enough to justify the risk. I donned a green suit and with a snail's progress crawled through the long grass and discovered that the Germans had laid a five-inch pipe from their trenches to within fifty yards of an indentation in our own. They would be able to enfilade us with gas before we could don our masks. We looked on our dangerous ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett
... nettles Disfigur'd his beds, Nor cabbage nor lettuce was seen, The slug and the snail Show'd their mischievous heads, And eat ev'ry ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... we asked each other. The shouts and gesticulations of the spectators soon told us as to his whereabouts. The peddler's horse had not yet got half way round! A snail could have crawled almost as fast. The animal could not step more than six inches at once, ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... antithesis—an ex-and concentric movement. If two circles are drawn and painted respectively yellow and blue, brief concentration will reveal in the yellow a spreading movement out from the centre, and a noticeable approach to the spectator. The blue, on the other hand, moves in upon itself, like a snail retreating into its shell, and draws away from the spectator. [Footnote: These statements have no scientific basis, but are ...
— Concerning the Spiritual in Art • Wassily Kandinsky
... on a moment's introspection, that thought makes language for itself to live in, just as a snail makes its own shell or a soul makes its own body. Who has not felt the anguish of not being able to find a word to hit off his thought exactly?—which surely means that the thought was already there unclothed, awaiting its embodiment. As the soul disembodied is not ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... some reference to the sheep, great companies of which roam the sunlit expanse with their attendant guardians—man and dog (who deserve a chapter to themselves). Southdown mutton has a fame that is extra-territorial; it has been said that the flavour is due to the small land snail of which the sheep must devour millions in the course of their short lives. But the explanation is more probably to be found in the careful breeding of the local farmers of a century or so ago. Gilbert White refers to two distinct breeds—"To the west of the Adur ... all had horns, smooth white faces ...
— Seaward Sussex - The South Downs from End to End • Edric Holmes
... to fit the snail, as it were," commented the land baron, patronizingly, gazing around the little cupboard of a room. "At any rate," he added, in an effort to hide his dissatisfaction, "it's a pleasure to become better acquainted with such a—what shall I ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... He went a snail's pace, and at last dismounted, and groped his way. He got more than one fall in the snow, and thought himself very fortunate, when, at last, something black towered before him, and it ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... Possession's nine points were with me; and here I sat and faced him; and here he stormed, and would do this and should do that; and I went on with my work. Then he would buy my Colisyum, and I wouldn't sell it for all his puffball lordship might offer. Isn't the house of the snail as much to him as the turtle's shell to the turtle? I'll have no upstart spilling his chemicals here, or devilling the stars from a seat on my roof." "Last autumn," said I, "David Claridge was housed here. Thy palace was a prison then." ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... was fifty-four. And when I saw him a week ago, he looked like sixty-four. His eyes were as yellow as the slime of a garden snail and bloodshot from drunkenness; but also because he'd shed tears of blood over his vices and misery. His face was brown and swollen like a piece of liver on a butcher's table, and he hid himself ...
— The Road to Damascus - A Trilogy • August Strindberg
... view things in the same light. You are not the man of the world you should be, Walter. Men of half your merit will eclipse you, winning opulence and distinction—while you, with your common sense notions, will be plodding on at a snail's pace. You are behind the age, and a stranger to ...
— Home Lights and Shadows • T. S. Arthur
... march through long ponds and pools of water, and mud up to the knees, in the direction opposite Gloucester Point, and near a point opposite to the enemy's fleet of gunboats. Through mud and water we floundered and fell, the night being dark. Mile after mile we marched at a snail's gait until we came to a large opening, surrounded by a rail fence. This was about midnight. Here we were ordered to build great fires of the rails near by. This was done, and soon the heavens were lit up by this ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... never known so slow a day. The minutes lagged unaccountably, the hours crawled forward at the most snail-like pace, and his impatience at this was tempered to a satirical amusement by the fact that the entire world of his friends seemed banded together in a conspiracy to engage his ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... Blagovo, suddenly losing his temper and getting up. "I say! If a snail in its shell is engaged in self-perfection in obedience to the moral law—would you ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff
... saw that they were gone, he crept back out of the subterranean passage. "It is so dangerous to walk on the ground in the dark," said he; "how easily a neck or a leg is broken!" Fortunately he knocked against an empty snail-shell. "Thank God!" said he. "In that I can pass the night in safety," and got into it. Not long afterwards, when he was just going to sleep, he heard two men go by, and one of them was saying, "How shall we contrive to get hold of the rich pastor's silver and gold?" "I could tell thee that," ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... they have many natural enemies. The slug, the snail, the wire-worm, the impudent sparrow, and the most impudent and insolent chaffinch, who all seem to have an idea that the seed is put into the ground entirely for their benefit. As soon as the pea-shoot comes above the earth, the slug has a mouthful in its tenderest ...
— The Book of Sports: - Containing Out-door Sports, Amusements and Recreations, - Including Gymnastics, Gardening & Carpentering • William Martin
... men were not better nor worse than the average man. They were the average men of their generation, selfish, narrow, material, encrusted in their prejudices like snails in their shells, struggling upward at a snail's pace to the larger life, with its added sweetness and humanities, but experiencing many a discomfiture by the way from those foul and triple fiends, the World, the ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... and enjoyed the trip, though many of my fellow passengers were pale and limp. Whirling to Paris in an easy car, through the beautiful wheatfields and vineyards, I thought of the old lumbering diligence, in which we went up to Paris at a snail's pace forty years before. I remained in Paris until October, and never enjoyed six months more thoroughly. One of my chief pleasures was making the acquaintance of my fourth son, Theodore. I had seen but little ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... But the Colonel clamoured to the heavens. Kennaston he qualified in various ways. And as for Dr. Jeal, he would hold him responsible—"personally, sir"—for the consequences of his dawdling in this fashion—"Damme, sir, like a damn' snail with a wooden leg!" ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... word she turned her head away, and slowly, slowly the carriage moved and began its snail's-pace ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann
... the brother, eagerly. "When you put a snail on the fire it cries out and squeaks just like a little child. Stargoli means ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland
... from a box some of the exquisite little violet snail-shells, and gave them to Lena, who cried out with delight, and instantly resolved to have a pair of ear-rings ...
— Nautilus • Laura E. Richards
... slug and snail have trailed Their slimy silver up and down The beds where once the moss-rose veiled Rich beauty; and the mushroom brown Swells where the lily ...
— Weeds by the Wall - Verses • Madison J. Cawein
... class, and two are black dragon-pearls of medium quality. Of the seven smaller pearls two are serpent-pearls, and five are mussel-pearls. The remaining pearls are in part sea-crane pearls, in part snail and oyster-pearls. They do not approach the great pearls in value, and yet few will be found to ...
— The Chinese Fairy Book • Various
... kingdom, he avoided their camp, dexterously inclined to the left, occupied Caesarea, traversed the salt desert and the river Halys, and invested Angora; while the Sultan, immovable and ignorant in his post, compared the Tartar swiftness to the crawling of a snail. He returned on the wings of indignation to the relief of Angora; and as both generals were alike impatient for action, the plains round that city were the scene of a memorable battle, which has immortalized the glory of Timur ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... said I; for I knew the number, and with my usual base habit of cowardice, I shrank into my sloth like a snail into its shell, and alleged incapacity and impracticability as a pretext to escape action. If left to myself, I should infallibly have let this chance slip. Inadventurous, unstirred by impulses of practical ambition, I was capable of sitting ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... of the jungle where a few occasional strokes of a machete were all that were required to enable the laden animals to pass. Under such circumstances progress was necessarily slow, and also fatiguing; but the Englishmen forgot not only the snail-like nature of their progress, but also the oppressive heat and fatigue of the march, for they were now in a new and wonderful world, more strange and beautiful than anything that the most fanciful imagination among them had ever pictured. To men like themselves, seamen, accustomed ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood
... tried the patience of the boy, for Old Rocks seemed to crawl forward like a snail, taking advantage of every cover that would shield them from the sight ...
— Frank Merriwell's Bravery • Burt L. Standish
... modern buildings. It was a remnant of old Ballarat which had survived the rage for new houses and highly ornamented terraces. Slivers had been offered money for that ricketty little shanty, but he declined to sell it, averring that as a snail grew to fit his house his house ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... at the rate of two miles an hour when the going was good. All we passed were the pedestrians,—a few of them,—and we usually found ourselves tailing along behind a camel-train or waiting for a wheelbarrow to get out of the way. In the side streets, or hutungs, we shouted ourselves along at a snail's pace, cleaving the dense throngs of inattentive citizens, whose right to the middle of the road was as great as ours, and who didn't purpose to be disturbed. Once on turning a corner, the groom pulled the bridle ...
— Peking Dust • Ellen N. La Motte
... whole fortune on my back; all that remains of my ancient house I should bear, snail-fashion, upon my head and shoulders. No, little dreamer, of two facts you may rest assured: one is that I shall never wear these jewels; the other that I never shall be a bride. Come, let me undress you; your blue eyes are so sleepy they are growing ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... good. The day following I was desperate, and I rafted together the foremast, the fore and main booms, and the fore and main gaffs. The wind was favourable, and I had thought to tow them back under sail, but the wind baffled, then died away, and our progress with the oars was a snail's pace. And it was such dispiriting effort. To throw one's whole strength and weight on the oars and to feel the boat checked in its forward lunge by the heavy drag behind, was not ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... this life sometimes dazzles, the lack of conveniences appalls. The post left London once a week. A journey to the country must be made in your own lumbering carriage, or on the snail-slow stagecoach over miserable roads, beset with highwaymen. The narrow, ill-lighted streets, even of London, could not be traversed safely at night; and ladies, borne to routs and levees in their sedan chairs, were lighted by link-boys, and were carried by stalwart, broad-shouldered ...
— Palamon and Arcite • John Dryden
... his nurse's lap on the bank, paddled out past the first point to the north, and pillowing her head on a cushioned thwart, gave herself up to dreamy contemplation on the sky. There was scarce a ripple on the lake. A faint breath of an offshore breeze fanned her, drifting the canoe at a snail's pace out from land. Stella luxuriated in the quiet afternoon. A party of campers cruising the lake had tarried at the bungalow till after midnight. Jack Fyfe had risen at dawn to depart for some distant logging point. Stella, once wakened, ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... that she met the sad end to which I have before alluded. She must have been very drunk, for the man told us that, in consequence of the darkness, and the fact that his horses were tired, he was proceeding at little more than a snail's pace. ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome
... with satisfaction. We take soup, then wait a few minutes for the fish; a few minutes more and the plates are changed, and the roast beef comes; another change and we take peas; change again and take lentils; change and take snail patties (I prefer grasshoppers); change and take roast chicken and salad; then strawberry pie and ice cream; then green figs, pears, oranges, green almonds, etc.; finally coffee. Wine with every course, of ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... so it was impossible to form an opinion of his legs, but his arms and shoulders certainly did not look like those of a "snail." ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... Blackbird—effort, which uplifts and ennobles the lowest! For which reason, you, contemner of every sublime aspiration, I contemn! And that fragile roseate snail, struggling unaided to silver over ...
— Chantecler - Play in Four Acts • Edmond Rostand
... Annette. "I'm sure I could do it. I could fit into all this like a like a snail into a shell. I'd want shoes that didn't slide on the parquet; and then oh, if only ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... half-tone," Glen assured her. "What's all this business, anyway? Put me wise, Sis, I'm groping like a blind snail ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... a cat develops into a spinster aunt; a monkey into a mischievous urchin; a pig into a gourmand; a sheep into a country bumpkin; a weasel into a lawyer; a dancing bear into a garrotter; a shark into a money-lender; a snail into the schoolboy to which Shakespeare likens him; a fish into a toper, and so on. These "developments" (twenty in number), which were dedicated to Mr. Darwin, are signed "C. H. B." and these are the initials of CHARLES H. BENNETT, one of the gentlest, ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... almost gone now, and he got his men into a series of well-concerted, steady, deadly efforts, that threatened to bring the whole Kingston four over with the snail-like white cord. But Sawed-Off pleaded with his men, and they buried their faces in the board and worked like mad. To the spectators they seemed hardly to move, but under their skins their muscles were crowding and shoving like a gang of slaves, and fairly ...
— The Dozen from Lakerim • Rupert Hughes
... puppyhood, he had always accompanied the Mistress and the Master. Unknown to the old dog, these walks had been shortened, mercifully, and slowed down, to accommodate themselves to Lad's waning strength: But the time came when even a half-mile, at snail-pace, over a smooth road, was too much for his wind ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... the stupid Peruonto, hanging down his head as if he was going to gaol. Away he went, walking as if he were a jackdaw, or treading on eggs, counting his steps, at the pace of a snail's gallop, and making all sorts of zigzags and excursions on his way to the wood, to come there after the fashion of a raven. And when he reached the middle of a plain, through which ran a river growling and murmuring at the bad manners of the stones that were stopping ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... eye an exceeding small white spot, no bigger than the point of a Pin. Afterwards I view'd it every way with a better Microscope and found it on both sides, and edge-ways, to resemble the Shell of a small Water-Snail with a flat spiral Shell: it had twelve wreathings, a, b, c, d, e, &c. all very proportionably growing one less than another toward the middle or center of the Shell, where there was a very small round ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... to the island of Lamary, the Lambri of Marco Polo; and by using the Italian term "the star transmontane," at once betrays the source of his plagiarism. His descriptions seem disguised extracts from Polo, with ridiculous exaggerations and additions; as of snail shells so large as to hold many persons. His account of the pretended varieties of the human race, as of nations of Hermaphrodites, and others equally ridiculous, which he places in separate islands of the Indian ocean, are ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... blacksmith had to bring clamps and a jackscrew before the new wheel could be adjusted. Even then it had an air of uncertainty that rendered speed impossible. The concluding five miles of the journey were taken at a snail's pace, and Helen reflected ruefully that it was possible to "bruk ze leg" on the level high road as well as on ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... "some wigs," "a dainty dishes," "a mutton shoulder," "a little mine," "hog-fat," and "an amelet": the menu is scarcely appetising, especially when among "Fishes and Shellfishes" our Portuguese Lucullus sets down the "hedgehog," "snail," and "wolf." After this such trifles as "starch" arranged under the heading of "Metals and Minerals," and "brick" and "whitelead" under that of "Common Stones" fall almost flat; but one would like to be initiated into the mysteries of "gleek," "carousal," and "keel," which are gravely asserted ...
— English as she is spoke - or, A jest in sober earnest • Jose da Fonseca
... slowly and the kind clergyman attributed her leisurely pace to dejection, but as a matter of fact, Edith was feeling quite happy and much interested in the tiny bright yellow snail shells the beach was providing for entertainment. She had been spared all that was possible of the depression and sorrow of the past weeks. Daddy had been poorly for years and Edith could not remember him as ever well and strong. His loss affected her more ...
— The Spanish Chest • Edna A. Brown
... at the tip of his finger and sliding down the air with wings flapping slowly and at the speed of an exceptionally languid snail—was ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... a road—sometimes entirely gutted, sometimes so obstructed with gasoline cans, hubs of wheels and scraps of iron, that I was obliged to lead Cesar by the bridle, while the others would walk ahead and clear a passage. Their progress was snail-like, for there was little oil left in our lantern and they hesitated before casting the refuse into the ditch for fear of profaning ...
— My Home In The Field of Honor • Frances Wilson Huard
... deep, narrow ditch with steep sides, full of undergrowth and brambles. Now we could hear distinctly the voices of men all around us, as it seemed, and to right and to left and in front we caught at intervals glimpses of red flames through the trees. We could only proceed at a snail's pace lest the continual rustle of our footsteps should betray us. So each advanced a few paces in turn; then we all paused, and then the next one went forward. We could no longer crawl; the undergrowth was too thick for that; we had to go forward ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... floor. Two of the Germans sat in the cushioned seat while the two linemen, the one who had been hit still unconscious, were pitched in beside him. The other two Germans were in front, and the car began to move at a snail's pace. The man beside the driver began speaking in German; his companion replied. But one of ...
— Facing the German Foe • Colonel James Fiske
... at that bank, which is standing very nearly still, and you will realise that you and your canoe are standing very nearly still too; and that all your exertions are only enabling you to creep on at the pace of a crushed snail, and that it's the water that is going the pace. It's a most quaint and ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... accumulation of all those symbols with which the ancient Mexicans conveyed the idea of water: a tub of standing water, drops springing out—not two, as heretofore in the symbol for Atl, water—but four drops; the picture for moisture, a snail; above, a crocodile, the king of the rivers. In the midst of these symbols you notice the profile of a man with a fillet, and a smaller one of a woman. There can be doubt these are the Mexican Noah, Coxcox, and his wife, Xochiquetzal; and at ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... hay-carts swayed, peasants shrieked maledictions or shook fists; but always, crawling at snail's pace, we managed to scrape past without accident. Sometimes we frightened cows; and a couple of great yellow dogs, drawing a cart which contained two peasant girls in costume, swore ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... tailors Went to kill a snail, The best man among them Durst not touch her tail. She put out her horns Like a little Kyloe cow: Run, tailors, run, Or she'll kill you ...
— Harry's Ladder to Learning - Horn-Book, Picture-Book, Nursery Songs, Nursery Tales, - Harry's Simple Stories, Country Walks • Anonymous
... wist aforetime," retorted she; "for no sooner set I my foot out of the door this morrow than I well-nigh stepped of a black snail." ...
— For the Master's Sake - A Story of the Days of Queen Mary • Emily Sarah Holt
... in his Animaux sans Vertebres, which has been pronounced as absurd and ridiculous, and has aided in throwing his whole theory into disfavor, is his way of accounting for the development of the tentacles of the snail, which is ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... spires? At length they in the rubbish spy A thing resembling a goose-pie. Thither in haste the Poets throng, And gaze in silent wonder long, Till one in raptures thus began To praise the pile and builder Van: "Thrice happy Poet! who may'st trail Thy house about thee like a snail: Or harness'd to a nag, at ease Take journeys in it like a chaise; Or in a boat whene'er thou wilt, Can'st make it serve thee for a tilt! Capacious house! 'tis own'd by all Thou'rt well contrived, ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... ocean' or 'the beauteous land' to which they contribute. A balloon is no more wonderful than an air-bubble, and were you to build an Atlantic liner as big as the Isle of Wight it would really be no more remarkable than an average steam-launch. Nobody marvels at the speed of a snail, yet, given a snail's pace to start with, an express train follows as a matter of course. Movement, not the rate of movement, is the mystery. Precisely the same materials, the same forces, the same methods, are employed in the little as in the big of these examples. Why should mere accumulation, ...
— Prose Fancies (Second Series) • Richard Le Gallienne
... had risen and his jaw had fallen to their uttermost limits. His hair, disturbed by contact with the pillow, gave the impression of standing on end. His eyes seemed to bulge like a snail's. He ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... good, and pure, Like snail, should keep within her door; But not, like snail, with silver track, Place all her wealth upon her back. ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... you what it is? Your head is turned right around! When royalty speaks to me, do I swell out? No! I know my place! I take no notice! But you—you are nosing but a crawling—snail! ...
— Christmas Entertainments • Alice Maude Kellogg
... of between two and three miles per hour; the engines needing to be just started, and then stopped again for a few minutes in order to keep the speed down to this very low limit. But they were all as yet so new to Arctic scenery—everything was so entirely novel to them—that even this snail's pace failed to prove wearisome, especially as the ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... forward as noiselessly as if I were stalking some prey. There were times when I advanced so slowly it would have puzzled a watcher to determine whether mine was not also the body of the dead. At length, even at that snail's rate of progress, I gained the protection of the tepees upon the other side of the camp, and skulked in among them. The lodge just before me, blackened by paint and weather, must be the one I sought. I rested close within its shadow, ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... walk a little faster?" said a whiting to a snail, "There's a porpoise close behind us, and he's treading on my tail. See how eagerly the lobsters and the turtles all advance! They are waiting on the shingle—will you come and join the dance? Will ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... have gone more deeply to his heart than these sounds—the rolling ocean—the free ocean—on which one can be borne throughout the world, fly with the wind, and wherever one went have one's own house with one, as the snail has his—to stand always upon home's ground, even in ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... accordingly, murmuring at the cowardice of the servants; but at such a snail's pace, that it seemed he would most willingly have been anticipated by any one whom his reproaches had roused to exertion. "Cowardly blockheads!" he said at last, seizing hold of the handle of the door, but without turning it effectually round— "dare you not ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... last, of 31 closely written sides of note-paper, he informs me, with reference to my obstinate silence, that though I think myself and am thought by others to be a mathematical Goliath, I have resolved to play the mathematical snail, and keep within my shell. A mathematical snail! This cannot be the thing so called which regulates the striking of a clock; for it would mean that I am to make Mr. Smith sound the true time of day, which I would by no means undertake upon a clock ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... be very little doubt that while a certain number may have improved with age, others will have deteriorated and even lost their original point and bearing. It is curious to find in the Solvamhall records our familiar friend the climbing snail puzzle, and it will be seen that in its modern form it ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... year's at the spring And day's at the morn; Morning's at seven; The hill-side's dew-pearled; The lark's on the wing; The snail's on the thorn; God's in his heaven— ...
— How to Add Ten Years to your Life and to Double Its Satisfactions • S. S. Curry
... rocks through this neck; toward it all trails inside the Gap converge. De Spain gave his horse his head—it was still too dark to distinguish the path—and depended on his towering landmarks for his general direction. He advanced at a snail's pace until he passed the base of El Capitan, when of a sudden, as he rode out from among high projecting rocks full into the opening, faint rays of light from the eastern dawn revealed the narrow, strangely enclosed and perfectly hidden valley before him. The eastern and southern sides ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... "I must be goin'. I did think I'd be forehanded in callin', but mother's been dredful wakeful lately, and when daylight comes, it don't seem as if I had the ambition of a snail. She don't like to be left alone for a minit, mother don't, so it's a bit of a puzzle to keep up ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... species, and "one of the most plentiful on the Phoenician coast."[288] It is unlikely that the ancients regarded it as a different shell from Murex trunculus. The Helix ianthina has a wholly different character. It is a sort of sea-snail, as the name helix implies, is perfectly smooth, "very delicate and fragile, and not more than about three-quarters of an inch in diameter."[289] All these shell-fish contain a sac or bag full of colouring ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... saw the very desk SHAKSPEARE used, after creeping unwillingly to school with a shining face like a snail's. I was pained to see evidence of the mischievousness of the juvenile genius, for it was slashed and hacked to such a doleful degree as to be totally ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... the shape of a large leaf, upon which all the fibres were marked. It measured ten feet by four. Another bore a resemblance to a great conch-shell. Many were impressed with the roots of shrubs and the images of various surrounding objects—snail-shells, pebbles, twigs, and the like. On a larger scale, bubbling brooks, waterfalls, and whirlpools were represented—now no longer a burning flood, but stiff, stark, and motionless. One sketch, which is reproduced, bore a startling ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... water is dashing as if in mockery, and the cry "Water! water!" rises from a hundred lips, the guard joining, for they are suffering like ourselves. Some comfort in that! Past midnight we reach Strasburg and are halted around an old wooden pump. It is broken! No water there. Still on and on at a snail-pace, up and over the almost interminable stretch of Fisher's Hill. At three o'clock in the morning we arrive at a place known by the classical name of Tom's Brook about twenty-five miles from Winchester. Never was nectar more delicious than the water of this stream, nor downy pillow ...
— Lights and Shadows in Confederate Prisons - A Personal Experience, 1864-5 • Homer B. Sprague
... there and then, all by himself: he would, Mr. Galloway, as I am a living sinner!" she hotly continued. "It's unbeknown how he'd have got here—holding on by the wall, like a snail, or fastening himself on to the tail of a cart; but try at it, in some way, he would! Be quiet, Jenkins! How dare you ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... my tardy steps: here shalt thou rest Upon this holy bank, no deadly Snake Upon this turf her self in folds doth make. Here is no poyson for the Toad to feed; Here boldly spread thy hands, no venom'd Weed Dares blister them, no slimy Snail dare creep Over thy face when thou art fast asleep; Here never durst the babling Cuckow spit, No slough of falling Star did ever hit Upon this bank: let this thy Cabin be, This other set with Violets ...
— The Faithful Shepherdess - The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher (Vol. 2 of 10). • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... the brown bay—for which a thousand francs over and above its value was paid by M. Godefroy as a result of a sumptuous snail supper given to that gentleman's coachman by the horse-dealer—thanks to the expensive brown bay which certainly went well, the financier was able to get through his many engagements satisfactorily. He appeared ...
— The Lost Child - 1894 • Francois Edouard Joachim Coppee
... not effect this, he did the next thing to it, and employed all the restoratives suggested by Luke Hatton. He bathed in milk, breakfasted on snail-broth, and swallowed a strange potion prepared for him by the apothecary, which the latter affirmed would make a new man of him and renovate all his youthful ardour. It certainly had produced an extraordinary effect; and when he presented himself before Aveline, his gestures were so ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 2 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth |
