"Boa" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... assassinated by his friend Francesco Guidalotti. It will be noticed that he proceeded slowly and surely in the case of each annexation, licking over his prey after he had throttled it and before he swallowed it, like a boa-constrictor. ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... a big boa," Meinik said. "Now, master, do you take the two torches in one hand, and have your knife ready in the other. If it coils round you, cut through it at once. This is a good place for fighting it, for there is nothing here for it to get its tail ...
— On the Irrawaddy - A Story of the First Burmese War • G. A. Henty
... others, 'good men and true.' Holland's society is very good; you always see some one or other in it worth knowing. Stuffed myself with sturgeon, and exceeded in champagne and wine in general, but not to confusion of head. When I do dine, I gorge like an Arab or a Boa snake, on fish and vegetables, but no meat. I am always better, however, on my tea and biscuit than any other regimen, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... rule in dis house dat nobody can use huh chiny or fo'ks or spoons who ain't boa'ding heah, and de odder day when yuh asked me to bring up a knife and fo'k she ketched me coming upstairs, and she says, "Where yuh goin' wid all dose things, Annie?" Ah said, "Ah'm just goin' up to Miss Laura's room with dat knife and fo'k." Ah said, "Ah'm goin' up for nothin' at all, Mis' ...
— The Easiest Way - Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911 • Eugene Walter
... control, while the agency bought up cheaply the small and dubious claims, or the claims of those persons who preferred a little ready money to a deferred and somewhat hazy repayment by the Republic. Gobseck was the insatiable boa constrictor of the great business. Every morning he received his tribute, eyeing it like a Nabob's prime minister, as he considers whether he will sign a pardon. Gobseck would take anything, from the present of game sent him by some ...
— Gobseck • Honore de Balzac
... singular-concelho); Boa Vista, Brava, Fogo, Maio, Paul, Praia, Porto Novo, Ribeira Grande, Sal, Santa Catarina, Santa Cruz, Sao Nicolau, Sao Vicente, Tarrafal note: there may be a new administrative structure of 16 districts ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... continued to whirl about faster and faster in the swirling waters. Five times each minute now it made the circuit, and, like the coils of a boa constrictor that is enfolding its victim, the circles ...
— Under the Ocean to the South Pole - The Strange Cruise of the Submarine Wonder • Roy Rockwood
... way towards the edge, and had just reached it and were pulling themselves out when a hideous shape rose out of the water behind them. It was like the head of an octopus joined to the body of a boa-constrictor, but head and neck were both of the same ghastly, livid grey as the other two creatures. It was evidently blind, too, for it took no notice of the brilliant glare of the searchlight, but it moved rapidly towards the two ...
— A Honeymoon in Space • George Griffith
... 28. The Boa Bidarra, or Rhamnus Jujuba of Linnaeus. This is a round yellow fruit, about the size of a gooseberry; its flavour is like that of an apple, but it has ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... feeling, comes his love of space, which makes him less regard the rounding and form of objects themselves, than their relations of light and shade and distance. Therefore Rubens and Michael Angelo made the fiery serpents huge boa constrictors, and knotted the sufferers together with them. Tintoret does not like to be so bound; so he makes the serpents little flying and fluttering monsters like lampreys with wings; and the children of Israel, instead ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... this is a terrible day for us all, is it not? Be careful of the hem of that veil, please. When I kissed Clarice good-by last Christmas I little thought what a good-by it was! Is she conscious? You have muddied the boa, I think, but never mind. Can ...
— In The Valley Of The Shadow • Josephine Daskam
... little water and oil. They usually sleep on the ground, with the exception of those who are Mahants, and they sometimes have no metal vessels, but use bags made of strong cloth for holding food and water. Men's names have the suffix Boa, as Datto Boa, Kesho Boa, while those of boys end in da, as Manoda, Raojida, and those of women in Bai, as Gopa Bai, Som Bai. The dead are buried, not in the common burial-grounds, but in some waste place. The corpse is laid on its side, facing the east, with head to the north and feet ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... The eyes of the boa-constrictor in the Zoo were gems of humanity in comparison with those of the negroid-Egyptian's as he turned to obey, and then stopped mulishly until a third little reminder chipped splinters from the marble at his heel, whereupon he stooped and ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... python[1] (the "boa," as it is commonly designated by Europeans, the "anaconda" of Eastern story), which is supposed to crush the bones of an elephant, and to swallow the tiger, is found, though not of so portentous dimensions, in the cinnamon gardens within a mile of the fort of Colombo, ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... root. Mr. Wedgwood follows Richardson, who follows Vossius in a fanciful etymology from the Greek [Greek: derkomai blepein] to see. Sharpness of sight, it is true, was attributed to the mythologized reptile, but the primitive draco was nothing but a large serpent, supposed to be the boa. This sense must accordingly be comparatively modern. The eagle is the universal type of keenness of vision. The reptile's way of moving himself without legs is his most striking peculiarity; and if we derive dragon from the root meaning to drag, to ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... off with it as if he were a grenadier carrying a dead comrade from the field. Extending it upon the forecastle deck, he now proceeds cylindrically to remove its dark pelt, as an African hunter the pelt of a boa. This done he turns the pelt inside out, like a pantaloon leg; gives it a good stretching, so as almost to double its diameter; and at last hangs it, well spread, in the rigging, to dry. Ere long, it is taken down; when removing some three feet of it, towards the ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... sure we were up early in the morning. There were dolls and toys for the little ones, with hoods and mittens, and for me a lovely squirrel muff, lined with blue, with a soft little boa for my neck. I was a happy girl that Christmas, I ...
— The Night Before Christmas and Other Popular Stories For Children • Various
... eye on the spot and cried out, "Fly all of you to the Cave! fly for your lives!" for I saw it was a huge snake, or boa, that would make a meal of one of us, if we did not get ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson Told in Words of One Syllable • Mary Godolphin
... person to whose lot it should fall to rescue a person from the crushing folds of a boa-constrictor, that it is no use pulling and hauling at the centre of the brute's body; catch hold of the tip of his tail,—he can then be easily unwound,—he cannot help himself;—he "must" come off. Again, if you wish ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... the Boulevard, and a few steps brought us in view of the stately white shrine on Claremont Heights. But I looked instead at her brilliant face against the velvety background of black hat and feather boa. ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark
... But mind this—if he comes, you've got to care for him the whole length of your boa—you won't persuade him to run in couples with anybody else. That's why he broke away the first time—and you were ever so mad with me because you thought I was at the bottom of it. But it was all his pride. He's too real independent to ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 102, February 6, 1892 • Various
... grizzly bear grip Mr. Gibney backed up against the nearest bungalow. A fringe of spears threatened him in front, but for the moment he was safe behind, and the king's body protected him. Whenever one of the savages made a jab at Mr. Gibney, Mr. Gibney gave the king a boa-constrictor squeeze, and ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... majesty, to do you a service I would go at once, with only my feather duster to protect me, and pinch a boa constrictor's tongue!" ...
— Pinocchio in Africa • Cherubini
... who have the charge of a wife, what are you going to say about it? We hope that this rapid review of the question does not make you tremble, that you are not one of those men whose nervous fluid congeals at the sight of a precipice or a boa constrictor! Well! my friend, he who owns soil has war and toil. The men who want your gold are more numerous than ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... in her which claimed kinship with his own. With her natural elegance stamped on her as by a die, with her dim and disinherited individual refinement of grace, which would have made any one wonder who she was anywhere—hat and veil and feather-boa and smart umbrella-knob and all—with her regular God-given distinction of type, in fine, she couldn't abide vulgarity much more than ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... daresay you'll be on the lake, or sliding on the snow, And breathing on your hands to make the circulation flow, Nestling your nose among the furs of which your boa's made,— The Fahrenheit here registers a ...
— Christmas - Its Origin, Celebration and Significance as Related in Prose and Verse • Various
... rushed—flew, rather than ran, higher up the acclivity, and speedily entered on a wild scene of rugged and barren rocks: but he cared not whither the windings of the natural path which he now pursued might lead him, since he had escaped from the view of the hideous boa-constrictor ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... His face was only a bit paler, a bit tighter than usual; he was only a trifle slower and more fastidious in his speech. It was midnight when he left Clifford peacefully slumbering in somebody's arm-chair, with a long suede glove dangling in his hand and a plumy boa twisted about his neck to protect his throat from drafts. He walked through the hall and down the stairs, and found himself on the sidewalk in a quarter he did not know. Mechanically he looked up at the name of the street. The name was not familiar. He turned and steered his course toward ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... quaint spectacle to the Lowestoft fishermen, for Posh assures me that he always went to sea in a silk hat, and generally wore a "cross-over," or a lady's boa, round his neck. Now a silk hat and a lady's boa aboard a longshore punt would be about as incongruous as a court suit in a shooting field. But FitzGerald was not vain enough to be self-conscious. He knew when he was comfortable, and that was enough ...
— Edward FitzGerald and "Posh" - "Herring Merchants" • James Blyth
... her to walk out much on account of the presence of wild beasts. Elephants were numerous—it was because of the destruction they had wrought on the farms that fishing had become the main support of the township. Early one morning a commotion broke out: a boa constrictor had been seen during the night, and bands of men armed with clubs, cutlasses, and muskets set off, yelling, to hunt the monster. Whenever she moved out she was followed by all the men, women, and children. On every side she saw skulls, rudely carved images, ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... lived on the coast of Florida I had a tame tarpon, which could swallow anything—croquet balls, door scrapers—and once ate an entire cottage pianoforte in half-an-hour. Here I may add that in my travels in Turkestan I was attacked by a boa-constrictor, and, though I escaped with my life, it proceeded to swallow the Bactrian camel on which I was riding. On the following day, however, when the boa was still in a comatose condition, I killed it with a boomerang, rescued ...
— Punch, Volume 156, 26 March 1919 • Various
... so vast that the brain is atrophied (as it were), that a second brain, located in the diaphragm, may come into play, and the suspension of all the faculties is in itself a kind of intoxication. A boa constrictor gorged with an ox is so stupid with excess that the creature is easily killed. What man, on the wrong side of forty, is rash enough to work after dinner? And remark in the same connection, that all great men have been moderate eaters. The exhilarating effect of the wing of ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... The tray shot from the bed into Grindlay's saving clutch as Bingo suddenly assumed the perpendicular. "You don't mean to say that you've been starving all the time I've been gorging myself like—like a boa-constrictor?" he demanded furiously. "Why on earth ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... and a half hours to run down stream to the Muara Laong, a Malay kampong at the mouth of the river Laong, which we intended to ascend by boats to the kampong Batu Boa, where the overland journey was to begin. As soon as we arrived in the afternoon the kapala was sent for to help in procuring a sufficient number of prahus for the next day. I brought twenty-nine coolies from Puruk Tjahu to serve as paddlers. ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... it. I was the only one out of it—for several seconds. Our Mr. Morshed failed to recognise me in my fur boa, and my appealin' winks at 'im behind your goggles didn't arrive. But when Eddy darling had told his story, I saluted, which is difficult in furs, and I stated I was bringin' him dispatches from the North. My Mr. Morshed cohered ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... largest specimens of this are about 15 or 20 feet in length. They are perfectly harmless, and live on small animals, chiefly the rodentia; occasionally the steinbuck and pallah fall victims, and are sucked into its comparatively small mouth in boa-constrictor fashion. One we shot was 11 feet 10 inches long, and as thick as a man's leg. When shot through the spine, it was capable of lifting itself up about five feet high, and opened its mouth in a threatening manner, but the poor thing was more inclined to crawl away. ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... themselves: now and then the huge boa and the macaurel, twining the trees. The great tiger-snake is seen with its head raised half a yard from the surface; the cascabel, too, coiled like a cable; and the coral-snake with his red and ringed body stretched at full length along the ground. The two last, though inferior in size to the ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... that your little finger can lift. Lastly, all this is enveloped in the little jaunty silk cloak, which fastens readily enough round the neck on ordinary occasions, but now refuses to meet by the breadth of a hand, and is made secure by a worsted boa of every bright color. Is this all? No,—wait,—I have forgotten the pretty clustering locked head and rosy dimpled face; and, in truth, they were so lost in the mountains of wool and wadding around as to be fairly overlooked. ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... many varieties of this large family; some, like the rattlesnake, cannot climb or swim, but crawl along the ground, the terror of unwary travellers who may tread upon them in the dim forest-paths; others are Water-snakes; some, like the Boa and Python, are dreaded, although not venomous, because, of their enormous strength, and power of crushing their victims in their close embrace; others, like the Cobra, for their deadly bite; while many—we might ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... his invitation to Captain Jack's cook. "Ol' Cap'n an' de Lady bofe gone away. No need you stayin' roun' here all de time. Git to de gran'stan' early an' git a front seat. Mebbe you'll meet up wid one ob mah pussonal lady fren's—Cuspidora Lee, whut I boa'ded wid befo' de wah claimed me. Cuspido' said she g'wine to weah a big pink hat wid yaller feathers. 'At's how you knows her. You sees me an' mah mascot when us swings pas' de gran' stan'. Ah'll be follerin' de Supreem Leader. He ...
— Lady Luck • Hugh Wiley
... finally to see Crewdson and her own chauffeur grouped with Urquhart. The bonnet was open; shining coils, mighty cylinders were in view, and a great copper feed-pipe like a burnished boa-constrictor. The chauffeur, a beady-eyed Swiss, stared approval; Crewdson, rubbing his chin, offered a deft blend of the deferential butler and the wary man of the world. She was tucked in; the Swiss started the monster; they were ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... promptly poked her finger through the hole and rubbed the snout of what must have been a full-sized boa-constrictor. Instantly to their horror, the black obstruction, went through a process of splitting, and several deadly fangs were revealed. Once more the wriggling black tongue darted out to caress the ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... see yo' pa den! He blue in de face an' dance de quadrille on de boa'ds. He leave his cha'h, git up, an' run 'cross to de odder side de platfawm, an' shake be fis' ovah dat man's head, an' screech out how it all lies dat de slaves evah 'ceive sich a treatments. 'Dat all lies, you ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... the night. Each tree was bound to the next by vines like tangled ropes, some drawn as taut as the halyards of a ship, and others, as thick as one's leg; they were twisted and wrapped around the branches, so that they looked like boa-constrictors hanging ready to drop upon one's shoulders. The moonlight gave to this forest of great trees a weird, fantastic look. I felt like a knight entering an enchanted wood. But nothing disturbed our silence except the sudden awakening of a great bird or the stealthy rustle of an ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... "Will one of you guide us to the house of our cousin Algaba?" they said. "No, because no one comes to get water unless all are together," said the women. Not long after Dalonagan and his companion went up to the town and the defensive fence, which was made of boa constrictors, did not notice them for the snakes slept. Not long after they arrived at the balaua. "Wes," they said, and the old woman alan [118] came to look at them through the window. "How are you?" she said. "Do not go to the balaua, because ...
— Traditions of the Tinguian: A Study in Philippine Folk-Lore • Fay-Cooper Cole
... Mr. and Mrs. Fitz would like, and named a thousand things, each better than the other, to all of which Fitz instantly said yes. The wretch was in such a state of infatuation that I believe if that lady had proposed to him a fricasseed elephant, or a boa-constrictor in jelly, he would have said, "O yes, certainly; put ...
— A Little Dinner at Timmins's • William Makepeace Thackeray
... have delicate white hands, flowing curls, flashing black eyes, and the gift of oratory—and a desire to exhibit them all; while those in pantaloons have their hair combed smoothly back, as if preparing to be swallowed by a boa-constrictor, wear white cravats, talk softly, and show a good deal of the whites of their eyes, from a chronic habit of looking up towards the moon and stars. As a general thing, these latter are of no practical use in the world, and make as good a tail to the kite ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... well give up trying. Paris dressmakers send you only their failures." And, having crushed Madame to silence, she finished her dressing, fastened her black lace veil with a flying swallow in diamonds, flung her feather boa over her shoulders, and taking up her gold chain bag, studded with rubies, marched out of the establishment with all the pomp and ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... Eudoxia Pence fumbled her boa. "Does Virgilia really want him? Does he want Virgilia? Do I want them to have each other? Shall I exert myself in his behalf?" Such were the questions she submitted to her own consideration as her eyes roved over the chatting, sipping throng. "Can he do for her all that a girl in ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... and the army of Wallace was enveloped in the embrace of a hideous boa-constrictor—tightening, closing, crushing every semblance of life from the victim enclosed in his toils. The flanking parties of horse were forced in upon the centre, and though, as even Turner grants, they fought with desperation, a general flight ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... not half-a-mile from the gates of the Zoological Gardens a gentleman wrote to the World about a snake he found in his garden. A London and North-Western guard found a boa-constrictor, 22 feet long, in his van! "The son of a well-known Member of Parliament" found a huge snake in one of the rooms of his father's London house. In fact, snake-finding became an epidemic, and if I had come across any more of the ophidian brood, I would have ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... flattered the elderly man's vanity immensely that nobody ever spoke of her as "Mrs. Tiralla," plain and simple, but always as "the beautiful Mrs. Tiralla." When he drove with her through Gradewitz—he on the box, she on the seat behind, in her veil and feather boa—everybody stared. And even in Gnesen the officers dining at the hotel used to rush to the window and crane their necks in order to see the beautiful Mrs. Tiralla drive past. Then Mr. Tiralla would crack his whip and look very elated. Let them envy him his wife. They did not know—nobody knew—that ...
— Absolution • Clara Viebig
... Enters unto the side show a powerful young man of the Colusa sort, and would see his money's worth. Blandly and with conscious pride the Professor directs the young man's attention to his fine collection of living snakes. Lithely the blacksnake uncoils in his sight. Voluminously the bloated boa convolves before him. All horrent the cobra exalts his hooded head, and the spanning jaws fly open. Quivers and chitters the tail of the cheerful rattlesnake; silently slips out the forked tongue, and is as silently absorbed. The fangless ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... Heard welcomed us and stopped tending his ash-cake, peas, and fat back long enough to squint over the top of the "specks dat Ole Mis had give him back in '70", then he took a long look at the mahogany clock that had "sot on her parlor fish boa'd". In spite of his ninety-six years his memory of the old days is still fresh and his body surprisingly active for a ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... and in summer it must be lovely. It is situated on a plateau, from the extremity of which the bank descends to the Green River. On both sides is the wild forest, and round the giant trunks the enamoured vine twines itself with the affectionate pertinacity of a hungry boa-constrictor, and boars its head in triumph to the topmost branches. But vegetable life is not like a Venus who, "when unadorned, is adorned the most;" and, the forest having cast off its summer attire, presents an uninviting aspect in the ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... exploits were tame beside stories of sharks and negroes, monkeys and alligators. There was one in particular, about a whole boat's crew sitting down on what they thought was a fallen tree, but which suddenly swept them all over on their faces, and turned out to be a boa-constrictor, and would have embraced one of them if he had not had the sail of the boat coiled round the mast, and palmed off upon him, when he gorged it contentedly, and being found dead on the next landing, his skin was used to cover the captain's sea-chest. Clarence ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... To try, at length, if tower and battlement And bastioned wall be not less hard to win, Less tough to break down than the hearts within. First he, in impatience and in toil is The burning AZIM—oh! could he but see The impostor once alive within his grasp, Not the gaunt lion's hug nor boa's clasp Could match thy gripe of vengeance or keep pace With the fell heartiness of ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... fellow-passengers. Two porters accompanied her, carrying her smart bags, and, even with so much assistance, she was draped with extra garments, which hung from her arms in varying and seductive shades of green. She herself was in green of a subtle olive shade, and her plumes and boa, her chains and chatelaine, her hand-bags and camera, marked her as the traveler triumphant and expectant. Like an Arabian princess, borne across the desert to the home of her future lord, she came panoplied with splendor. The consciousness of being ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... with a sweet oval face, bright brown hair, and the most beautiful eyes I have ever seen in my life. She was dressed in some dark green material, wore a fawn jacket, and, because the afternoon was cold, had a boa of marten fur round her neck. I can remember also that her hat was of some flimsy make, with lace and glittering spear points in it, and that the whole structure was surmounted by two bows, one of black ribbon, ...
— A Bid for Fortune - or Dr. Nikola's Vendetta • Guy Boothby
... bearing restored courage. With head erect, the intrepid Tarasconian slowly and calmly made the circuit of the booth, passing the seal's tank without stopping, glancing disdainfully on the long box filled with sawdust in which the boa would digest its raw fowl, and going to take his ...
— Tartarin of Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... remember the evening when it came! What a cry of eager voices, what a group of cheeks in flame, When the wondrous boa was opened that had come from over seas, With its smell of mastic-varnish and its flash of ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... in the Old World is quite as formidable as the boa in the New. Perhaps it is even more to be dreaded; for, notwithstanding its great length—twenty-five to thirty feet—it is exceedingly nimble and its muscular strength is immense. There are numerous authentic stories on record of its having crushed the buffalo and the tiger in its huge constricting ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... began to beat heavily. What if her suspicions were but the advance guard of a painful truth! What if this keen analyst of other men's ideas—she dared not finish the thought. With a sluggish movement the music uncoiled itself like a huge boa about to engulf a tiny rabbit. The simile forced itself against her volition; all this monstrous preparation for a—rabbit! In a concert-hall the poetic idea of the tone-poem was petty. And the churning ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... digestion, with no small amount of effort, Henri managed to dispose of his own share; but he was last of being done, and fell in the savages' esteem greatly. The way in which that sticky compost of boiled maize went down was absolutely amazing. The man opposite Dick, in particular, was a human boa-constrictor. He well-nigh suffocated Dick with suppressed laughter. He was a great raw-boned savage, with a throat of indiarubber, and went quickly and quietly on swallowing mass after mass, with the solemn gravity of an owl. It mattered not a straw to him that ...
— The Dog Crusoe and his Master • R.M. Ballantyne
... Eminent K.C. on parade, so to speak, in the piping times of peace. When performing, and on the war-path as you might say, this successful limb of the law is a portentous personage. Persuasive, masterful, clean-shaven, he fixes you with his eye as the boa-constrictor fascinates the rabbit. Pontifically, compassionately, almost affectionately indeed, he makes it plain to you what an ass you in reality are, and he looks so wise the while that you are hardly able to bear it. He handles his arguments with such petrifying ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... quickened his pace to keep step with hers. Miss Nugent with her chin sunk in a fur boa looked neither to the right nor the left, and turning briskly into the alley, turned the handle of Mr. Wilks's door and walked in, leaving her companion ...
— At Sunwich Port, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... Life-rent, what is the issue to be looked for? Hangmen and Catchpoles may, by their noose-gins and baited fall-traps, keep-down the smaller sort of vermin; but what, except perhaps some such Universal Association, can protect us against whole meat-devouring and man-devouring hosts of Boa-constrictors? If, therefore, the more sequestered Thinker have wondered, in his privacy, from what hand that perhaps not ill-written Program in the Public Journals, with its high Prize-Questions and so ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... they place in their mouths; then each one, cutting off at his lips what his mouth cannot hold, passes it over to his companion; or else the gluttons, letting the shreds hang down to the ground, swallow them gradually, as a boa-constrictor swallows an animal, and like it stretched out at full length ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... confusion; the fierce wild-boars, bristling in their rage; the bounding leopards; the swift antelope, of every species; the savage panthers; jackals, and foxes, and all the screaming and shrieking infinities of the monkey tribe. Occasionally, amongst the dense mass could be perceived the huge boa-constrictor, rolling in convolutions—now looking back with fiery eyes upon his pursuers, now precipitating his flight—while the air was thronged with its winged tenants, wildly screaming, and occasionally dropping down dead with fear. To crown the whole, high in the expanse, a ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... at the demi-toilette as the Parisian, and the extreme neatness and smartness of their walking gowns is very refreshing after the floppy, blowsy, trailing dresses, accompanied by the inevitable feather boa, of which English girls, who used to be so tidy and "tailor-made," now seem so fond. The universal white "waist" is so pretty and trim on the American girl. It is one of the distinguishing marks of a land of the free, a land where "class" hardly exists. The girl in the store wears the white ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... I have, of the way you're treating a lady!' answered a voice; and out stepped a figure in skirts! By George, Otty, you might have knocked me down with a—with a feather boa: which was just what this apparition seemed preparing to do. I had brought the taxi to rest close under a gas-lamp, and in the light of it she confronted me, slightly swaying the hand which grasped ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Then the figure, with an angry guttural sound, began to put forth its full strength. The arms encircled Landless with a slowly tightening iron band; the great dark shoulder came forward with the force of a battering-ram; the limbs twined like boa-constrictors around the limbs of the other. Locked together, the two reeled into a little fairy glade, where the short grass, pearled with dew, lay open to the moon. Here, borne backwards by the overwhelming force of his assailant, Landless fell heavily to the ground. The figure falling with him, ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... all that you bring in your train, O Fire! I foresee winter; its coming both troubles and pleases me. I've already begun to thicken and embellish my fur-coat in its honor, the darker stripes are becoming black, my white tippet swells into a dazzling boa, and the fur on my belly surpasses in beauty anything that has ever been seen. What shall I say of my tail, broad as a club, with alternate rings of fawn-color and black, or of the sensitive, priceless aigrettes which spring from my ears? My ear-rings She ...
— Barks and Purrs • Colette Willy, aka Colette
... play!' and so we were not interfered with. I remember saying to myself, 'If I win, it must be a triumph of race and mind over matter;' but, Jack, that was mighty lively matter. We both had been rowing and practicing in the gymnasium; we were both as hard as iron. Deering was as supple as a boa-constrictor, and had a fist like a twelve-pound hammer. Later, the boys told me the fight lasted twenty minutes. The last I saw was Deering knocked out on the ground, and then my eyes closed, and the boys led me to my room. They swathed ...
— The Wedge of Gold • C. C. Goodwin
... arrondissement of Ville-aux-Fayes. To avoid too many explanations it is necessary to state, once for all, succinctly, the genealogical ramifications by means of which Gaubertin wound himself about the country, as a boa-constrictor winds around a tree,—with such art that a passing traveller thinks he beholds some natural effect of ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... it to helplessness—the monster ate it! The lipless jaws gaped widely. The shapeless hands forced in the head of the animal. The throat muscles expanded hugely: and in less than a minute it had swallowed its living prey as a boa-constrictor swallows a monkey. ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... immediately hoped Mrs. Pendennis and the children were well. The overpowering mother had taken utter possession of this poor little thing. Rosey's eyes followed the Campaigner about, and appealed to her at all moments. She sat under Mrs. Mackenzie as a bird before a boa-constrictor, doomed—fluttering—fascinated—scared and fawning as a whipt spaniel before ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... unoffending animals. He subsists on the fallen fruits of the forest. When an enemy approaches he never thinks of moving, but quietly draws himself under his shell and there awaits his doom in patience. He only seems to have two enemies who can do him any damage: one of these is the boa-constrictor—this snake swallows the tortoise alive, shell and all. But a boa large enough to do this is very scarce, and thus there is not much to apprehend from that quarter. The other enemy is man, who takes up ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... by the voices. Sophy started up from the ground, made some unintelligible excuse, and while Mademoiselle was confounded with admiration at the sight of the book, inflicted another boa-constrictor ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... excusable ignorance, or under some false impression of being able to improve upon nature; but this is conclusive and unpardonable. Again, take the stem of the chief tree in Claude's Narcissus. It is a very faithful portrait of a large boa-constrictor, with a handsome tail; the kind of trunk which young ladies at fashionable boarding-schools represent with nosegays at the top of them, by way of ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... rushing would they not have made through the ranks of the astonished professors and students? The Anniversary set, for example, who sweep the pews of men, or, coming upon one forlorn, crush him as a boa does a sheep. Our silly little flock only laughed, colored, and retreated to the volantes, where they held a council of war, and decided to go visit some establishment where possibly ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... that there are certain exceptional complexions to which the purple tinge, above alluded to, is natural. Nature is fertile in variety. I saw an albiness in London once, for six-pence, (including the inspection of a stuffed boa-constrictor,) who looked as if she had been boiled in milk. A young Hottentot of my acquaintance had his hair all in little pellets of the size of marrowfat peas. One of my own classmates has undergone a singular change of late years,—his hair losing its original tint, and getting a remarkable ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... at him. Her face was scarlet, for the coupling of their names, and Drexley's quiet smile, was significant. But Douglas only laughed gaily as he reached for his hat, and drew Cicely's feather boa around her with ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim
... vegetable world. Monkeys chattered in crowds above their heads, and made grimaces like the fiendish spirits of these solitudes; while hideous reptiles, engendered in the slimy depths of the pools, gathered round the footsteps of the wanderers. Here was seen the gigantic boa, coiling his unwieldy folds about the trees, so as hardly to be distinguished from their trunks, till he was ready to dart upon his prey; and alligators lay basking on the borders of the streams, or, gliding under the waters, seized their incautious victim before ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... Lord Taborley. I have my suspicions of these simply complicated and complicatedly simple women. Set me down as old-fashioned. Having been only once married, I can't enter into the refinements of feeling of such matrimonially inclined boa-constrictors as Mrs. Lockwood. I sha'n't give myself the chance of meeting her. I'm an old man; it would be too upsetting. If I talked with her, I shouldn't understand. So I must take your word for it that, however much appearances may have been against her, ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... ever opium-eater dreamed. The long processions of monkeys, who kept pace with them along the tree-tops, and proclaimed their wonder in every imaginable whistle, and grunt, and howl, had ceased to move their laughter, as much as the roar of the jaguar and the rustle of the boa had ceased to move their fear; and when a brilliant green and rose-colored fish, flat-bodied like a bream, flab-finned like a salmon, and saw-toothed like a shark, leapt clean on board of the canoe to escape the rush of the huge alligator ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... despatched a messenger after us. A little lady on a pony, attended by a tawny-faced great square-shouldered groom on a tall horse, rode past, drew up on one side, and awaited our coming. She was dressed in a grey riding-habit and a warm winter-jacket of gleaming grey fur, a soft white boa loose round her neck, crossed at her waist, white gauntlets, and a pretty black felt hat with flowing rim and plume. There she passed as under review. It was a curious scene: the iron-faced great-sized groom on his bony ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... 247; stomacher; petticoat, panties; under waistcoat; jock [for men], athletic supporter, jockstrap. sweater, jersey; cardigan; turtleneck, pullover; sweater vest. neckerchief, neckcloth[obs3]; tie, ruff, collar, cravat, stock, handkerchief, scarf; bib, tucker; boa; cummerbund, rumal[obs3], rabat[obs3]. shoe, pump, boot, slipper, sandal, galoche[obs3], galoshes, patten, clog; sneakers, running shoes, hiking boots; high-low; Blucher boot, wellington boot, Hessian boot, jack boot, top boot; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... engine are at present taking their periodical doze like a great boa constrictor. The engineer—a native of Philadelphia—has gone home for the holidays, and will not return till October or November, when the cane harvest begins and his indispensable services will be required. He has unscrewed ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... window—the figure of a girl in a tumbled muslin dress, with a large hat, and a profusion of feathers and streamers fluttering about her. In her descent upon the terrace she dropped her gloves; stooping to pick them up, she dropped her boa; in her struggle to recapture that, she trod on ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... on the arms and shoulders which had the effect, however, of making him drop his yataghan, he grasped his adversary with his gigantic hands, lifted him up, and then hugged him with the embrace of a boa-constrictor. But now it appeared that Patrona also was by no means a novice in the art of self-defence, for clutching with both hands the giant's throat, he squeezed it so tightly that in a few seconds the Janissary ...
— Halil the Pedlar - A Tale of Old Stambul • Mr Jkai
... black veil. The most prominent thing about her was a large and obtruding tooth, which gave her somewhat the appearance of a good-natured walrus; she held a morocco-leather satchel in her unoccupied hand, and wore a large feather-boa round her neck. ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... all nature droops and is grateful at the return of the rains. The general dank heat stimulates vegetable growth in every scale from mildew to mahogany trees, and multiplies the members of the animal kingdom, be they mosquitoes, elephants or boa constrictors. There would be abundant food but for the superabundant creatures that struggle for it and prey upon one another. For mankind life is at once easy and hard. Food of a sort may often be had for ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... several of the most curious. An ugly cobra laid and blinked at me through the glass, looking quite as dangerous as he was. There were big and little snakes,—black, brown, and speckled, lively and lazy, pretty and plain ones,—but I liked the great boa best. ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... that you had boa-constrictor habits," she gasped. "Why, Tom Cameron! you must have ...
— Ruth Fielding on the St. Lawrence - The Queer Old Man of the Thousand Islands • Alice B. Emerson
... audacity and her steel-trap quickness of mind. She has a dead white skin, green eyes, and most wonderful hair, hair the color of a well-polished copper samovar. She is an extremely thin woman who affects sheathe skirts and rather reminds me of a boa-constrictor. She always reeks of Apres londre and uses a lip-stick as freely before the world as an orchestra conductor uses a baton or a street-sweeper a broom. She is nervous and sharp-tongued and fearless and I thought, at first, that she was making a dead set at my Duncan. But I can now ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... everlasting pity Alden contradicted him, for he broke out like one ravin' distracted mad. 'I'll be damned,' said he, 'if ever I saw a Yankee that didn't bolt his food whole like a boa constrictor. How the devil can you expect to digest food, that you neither take the trouble to dissect, nor time to masticate? It's no wonder you lose your teeth, for you never use them; nor your digestion, for you overload it; nor your saliva, for you expend ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... Reader,—the consternation and horror which succeeded this "new development," are, without exaggeration, perfectly indescribable. The people drew long breaths, as though they had escaped from the fangs of a boa constrictor; the old ladies charged their daughters, that should Miss —— be seen in that village again, by no means to permit themselves to be seen in the street with her; and many other charges were delivered by said mothers, ...
— The American Prejudice Against Color - An Authentic Narrative, Showing How Easily The Nation Got - Into An Uproar. • William G. Allen
... began writhing, twisting her hard young body like a boa constrictor in his hands. But he was stronger. He bent her back over his knee, until a mangled moan was coming from her speaker; then his foot kicked out, knocking her feet out from under her. He let her ...
— Police Your Planet • Lester del Rey
... lots to investigate, and after much tacking among the paddy dykes found, to my surprise, on reaching it, that the flowers came from a huge wistaria that had coiled itself up the tree. The vine must have been at least six feet round at the base, and had a body horribly like an enormous boa that swung from branches high in air. The animal look of the vegetable parasite was so lifelike that one both longed and loathed to touch it ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell
... with little Nancy Holt as her child. She proceeded to impersonate both that heroine and Madame La Farge. It was simpler than it sounds. As Lucy she still wore the wedding veil, as Madame La Farge she snatched off the veil, wrapped a fur boa around her, seized her mother's knitting, and by leaping from one side of the stage to the other, by using now a high voice now a low one, the illusion was perfect. The chee-ild was rather roughly pushed about during the scene, which ...
— The Cricket • Marjorie Cooke
... United Kingdom Bismarck Archipelago Papua New Guinea Bismarck Sea Pacific Ocean Bissau [US Embassy] Guinea-Bissau Bjornoya (Bear Island) Svalbard Black Rock Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas) Black Sea Atlantic Ocean Boa Vista Cape Verde Bogota [US Embassy] Colombia Bombay [US Consulate General] India Bonaire Netherlands Antilles Bonifacio, Strait of Atlantic Ocean Bonin Islands Japan Bonn [US Embassy] Germany Bophuthatswana South ...
— The 1992 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... a heavy blow from his fist. At the third blow the blood poured out of the mouth of the carpenter, who writhed under the pressure of his adversary's knee like a buffalo stifled by a boa-constrictor; he succeeded at last in freeing one hand, which he ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... all-glorious, of course. She certainly looked like an old vulture, in a pelisse of gray velvet, with a chinchilla boa round her long, bare neck, and her big beak, with marabouts overshadowing it, of the same color. Monsieur de Talbrun —well! Monsieur de Talbrun was very bald, as bald as he could be. To make up for the ...
— Jacqueline, Complete • (Mme. Blanc) Th. Bentzon
... will next have his attention drawn to that family of serpents of which the Boa is the great representative. These are all grouped together in cases (12-15). This family has what naturalists call "the rudiments of legs." They are a nobler family than that which the rattlesnake represents, inasmuch as they do not depend upon poison to master their enemy; but fight ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... become a Butterfly by the help of a battered pair of fairy wings, stretched on wire, which were part of the theatrical stock. 'The shy little Dormouse' was creeping about on all fours under a fur jacket, with a dilapidated boa for a long tail, but her 'blind brother the Mole' had escaped from her, and had been transformed into the Frog, by means of a spotted handkerchief over his back, and tremendous leap-frog jumps. Primrose, in another pair of fairy wings, was personating ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... go there often? How ever do you find the time for such things?" asked Kitty, busily cutting from a big sheet the touching picture of a parent bird with a red head and a blue tail offering what looked like a small boa constrictor to one of its nestlings, a fat young squab with a green head, yellow body, and no ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... was fairly ingenious. I invented the following story. I happened to be taking a holiday in Shaphambury, and I was making use of the opportunity to seek the owner of a valuable feather boa, which had been left behind in the hotel of my uncle at Wyvern by a young lady, traveling with a young gentleman—no doubt a youthful married couple. They had reached Shaphambury somewhen on Thursday. I went over the story many times, and gave my imaginary uncle and his hotel ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... and adjusted her boa. "Swot," she said, "you are the most ungrateful boy I ever knew, and I'm not merely not going to read any more to-day, but I have a good mind not to come to-morrow, just to ...
— Wanted—A Match Maker • Paul Leicester Ford
... him caused him to look up. Mrs. Devereux, grey and tall, boa'd, gloved, umbrella'd, stood regarding him and his companion from the bank. Instinct prompted him immediately to screen Sanchia by dragging her into the party. He held up the net and plunged. ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... the coils of the boa-constrictor is a wonderful picture. A boy must be hard to please if he wishes for ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... you never heard of it. Do you fink you would have heard of a boa-'strictor forty-five feet long if there was one in ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the Yankee backwoodsman, Mark, my lad. He didn't 'hanker arter crows' after he had eaten them once. I don't 'hanker arter' snakes, but I'd sooner sit down to a section of boa-constrictor roasted ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn
... evident horror of their intended victims, confined in the same cages, was distinctly mentioned. The gratification of mere curiosity does not justify the infliction of such torture on the lower animals. Surely the sight of a stuffed boa-constrictor ought to content a reasonable curiosity. Imagine what would be felt if a child were subjected to such a fate, or what could be answered if the present victims could tell their agonies as well ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 433 - Volume 17, New Series, April 17, 1852 • Various
... in the midst of an affecting appeal in Court on a slander case delivered himself of the following flight of genius. "Slander, gentlemen, like a boa constrictor of gigantic size and immeasurable proportions, wraps the coil of its unwieldy body about its unfortunate victim, and, heedless of the shrieks of agony that come from the utmost depths of its victim's soul, loud and reverberating as the night thunder that rolls in the heavens, it finally ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... the best of the breed, the captains of the liners, and he no more resembled them than did he resemble the bluff-faced, gruff-voiced skippers I had read about in books. By his side stood a woman, of whom little was to be seen and who made a warm and gorgeous blob of colour in the huge muff and boa of red fox in which she ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London |
