"Crab" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the gold to Pevensey on horseback—three loads of it—and then up to the north chamber, above the Great Hall of Pevensey Castle, where De Aquila lay in winter. He sat on his bed like a little white falcon, turning his head swiftly from one to the other as we told our tale. Jehan the Crab, an old sour man-at-arms, guarded the stairway, but De Aquila bade him wait at the stair-foot, and let down both leather curtains over the door. It was Jehan whom De Aquila had sent to us with the horses, and only Jehan had loaded the gold. When our story was told, De ...
— Puck of Pook's Hill • Rudyard Kipling
... of science, undoubtedly, evolution has won the day. Nevertheless, in religious circles, old time prejudices and slow conservatism, clinging to its creeds, as the hermit crab clings to the cast-off shell of oyster or clam, still resist it. The great body of the Christian laity looks askance on it. And even in progressive America, one of the largest and most liberal of American denominations has recently formally tried and condemned one of its clergy for ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various
... perch, and clinging to it as he drew in his line was a large, hard-shelled, long-clawed crab. Tom put the crab in the basket, knowing well what delicious white meat was in the fellow's legs ...
— Stories of California • Ella M. Sexton
... simple-minded standards of the field and farm, its Southern and Western habits of life and manners, its assumptions of ethics and history; but even in Washington, society was uneasy enough to need no further fretting. One was almost glad to act the part of horseshoe crab in Quincy Bay, and admit that all was uniform — that nothing ever changed — and that the woman would swim about the ocean of future time, as she had swum in the past, with the gar-fish and the shark, ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... than otherwise, though essentially amiable. I knew a tragedian once who, after killing seventeen Indians, a road-agent, and a gross of cowboys between eight and ten P.M. every night for sixteen weeks, working six nights a week, was afraid of a mild little soft-shell crab that lay defenceless on a plate before him on the evening of the seventh night of the last week. Tragedians make agreeable companions, I can tell you; and if J. Brutus Davenport is a tragedian, I think Mrs. Pedagog would do well to let him have the suite, provided, ...
— The Idiot • John Kendrick Bangs
... are always inventing some new way of giving a big strapping cub an adequate form of exercise, but the average farmer finds more kinds of it than he wants when the crab grass gets busy. ...
— Oklahoma Sunshine • Freeman E. (Freeman Edwin) Miller
... which your foot would sink. Deep tanks among these rocks, which the sea replenishes at high tide, and then leaves the bottom all covered with various sorts of sea-plants, as if it were some sea-monster's private garden. I saw a crab in one of them; five-fingers too. From the edge of the rocks, you may look off into deep, deep water, even at low tide. Among the rocks, I found a great bird, whether a wild-goose, a loon, or an albatross, I scarcely know. It was in such a position that I almost fancied ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... join in splashing water over both the girl and her bearers. When they come out of the water one of the two attendants makes a heap of grass for her charge to squat upon. The other runs to the reef, catches a small crab, tears off its claws, and hastens back with them to the creek. Here in the meantime a fire has been kindled, and the claws are roasted at it. The girl is then fed by her attendants with the roasted claws. After that she is freshly decorated, ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... are like the young plaintain tree, and thy fingers are the buds of the champaka flower." He spoke rapidly, crushing her hands cruelly. "The bone of thy knee showing whitely through thy garment is shaped even as the shell of a crab, and the whiteness of the bone from thy knee to thy slender ankle is like a ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... a matter of degree of the same thing. Look. You have a kind of crustacean living in the lakes here, very much like an ordinary crab. It has large claws in which it holds anemones, tentacled sea animals with no power of motion. The crustacean waves these around to gather food, and eats the pieces they capture that are too big for them. This is biontergasy, ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison
... his way back like a crab, sliding a little, but not once allowing his tensioned limbs to relax to the danger point. Before the airplane had come within five hundred feet of the sea, he felt his legs grasped in the strong hands of John and Tom, and the next moment they had ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser
... was the drunkest, and when he saw pa coming with the gang of hands, with ropes and spears, he winked at the other elephants and seemed to say: "Watch me tree 'em," for he came out of the gate and bellowed, and made a charge at the gang, and pa beat them all going up crab apple trees. The senator's son saw pa up a tree, and he said: "Old gentleman, if these are your animals, or insects, or whatever they are, you ought to come down off your perch and take them to a Keeley cure, because ...
— Peck's Bad Boy at the Circus • George W. Peck
... time for lights to be down, and we all got happily out of it but Traddles. He was too unfortunate even to come through a supper like anybody else. He was taken ill in the night—quite prostrate he was—in consequence of Crab; and after being drugged to an extent which Demple (whose father was a doctor) said was enough to undermine a horse's constitution, received a caning and six chapters of Greek Testament for ...
— Ten Boys from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... edge away crab-wise into the wood. Like a metronome I said to myself over and over monotonously, don't run, don't run! Dim legends about the power of the human eye floated through my brain. But how quell the creature with my eye when I could not see it? As for the hopeless expedient of screaming, I hadn't ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... "Probably a crab," said De Sylva. "There are jumping crabs all around here. It will not hurt you. It is quite a ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... smoky and dark. Women in shawls and men's tweed caps hurried by. Men hung over the palings; the children played in the doorways. A low hum came from the mean little cottages. In some of them there was a flicker of light, and a shadow, crab-like, moved across the window. Laura bent her head and hurried on. She wished now she had put on a coat. How her frock shone! And the big hat with the velvet streamer—if only it was another hat! Were the people looking at her? They must be. It was a mistake to have come; she knew all along ...
— The Garden Party • Katherine Mansfield
... meat of a good sized crab, a tumblerful of shrimps and a clove of garlic. Chop all very fine and make into small force meat balls with a beaten egg. Fry them a light brown in butter, and serve in any fish ...
— Joe Tilden's Recipes for Epicures • Joe Tilden
... flowering trees, and standing out like a lovely white naked thing against the dusk of the evening, was a double cherry in full bloom, while close beside it, but not so visible so late, with all their graceful growth outlined by rosy buds, were two Japanese crab apples. The grass just there is filled with narcissus, and at the foot of the oak a colony of tulips consoles me for the loss of the purple crocus patches, so lovely a little ...
— The Solitary Summer • Elizabeth von Arnim
... Genius lives, like the hermit crab that she calls herself; here she dwells apart from kith and kin, her mind and heart and miracle-working hands taken captive by the charms of the siren ...
— Penelope's Postscripts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... the sole fool that might do it, Brother, unless"—he pointed at De Aquila, whom he had only met that day—"yonder tough Norman crab kept me company. But, Sir Hugh, I did not mean to shame him. He hath been somewhat punished through, maybe, little fault ...
— Rewards and Fairies • Rudyard Kipling
... did Sir Thomas say;—and well he might, When pity to resentment did succeed; For, certainly, (tho' not with wit) the Knight Had hit the Friar very hard, indeed! And heads, nineteen in twenty, 'tis confest, Can feel a crab-stick sooner ...
— Broad Grins • George Colman, the Younger
... of the common oak, and their cups and outer rind had been removed, so that they had evidently been prepared to serve as food for, man; the apples were small and coriaceous, resembling the modern crab-apple; the Indian poppy cannot have grown without cultivation; but this was perhaps but an example of the same species already recognized in the Lake dwellings of Switzerland. It is difficult to say whether it was used for food or whether oil was ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... uncommon sight to see her down on her knees on the kitchen floor, wielding her brush and rag like the rest of us. In canning and preserving time there floated out from her kitchen the pungent scent of pickled crab apples; the mouth-watering, nostril-pricking smell that meant sweet pickles; or the cloying, tantalising, divinely sticky odour that meant raspberry jam. Snooky, from her side of the fence, often used to peer through the pickets, gazing in the direction of the enticing ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... how full of weariness after heavy tramping through leagues of loose stones. I had been tramping from desolate Cape Pitsoonda over miles and miles of sea holly and scrub through a district where were no people. I had been living on crab-apples and sugar the whole day, for I could get no provisions. It is a comic diet. I should have liked to climb up inland to find a resting-place and seek out houses, but I was committed to the seashore, ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... of pantaloons, that, when sustained by a single suspender, completely equipped him, formed his every-day suit. How, with this lavish superfluity of clothing, he managed to perform the surprising gymnastic feats it has been my privilege to witness, I have never been able to tell. His "turning the crab," and other minor dislocations, were always attended with success. It was not an unusual sight at any hour of the day to find Melons suspended on a line, or to see his venerable head appearing above the roofs of the outhouses. Melons knew the exact height ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... directed various operations with her eye fixed rather upon this world than the next, and told her visitors precisely what she thought of them. I am thankful not to have met this devastating lady in the flesh, because to be called "a hookery-snidy, trundle-trailed king-crab," and then told to kiss her, would have been more than ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 1, 1916 • Various
... inkstand planted in the sand, was at work condensing the parliamentary debates for the Pursuivant, and was glad to perceive that he was so far alive as to be leaning on his elbow, slowly shovelling the sand or smaller pebbles with the frail tenement of a late crab, and it was another good sign to hear his voice in a voluntary ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... inserted, as he stooped forward, between his neck and his collar, was a large live shore-crab, holding on tight ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... was, as you know, in sanguis, ripe as a pomewater, who now hangeth like a jewel in the ear of Coelo, the sky, the welkin, the heaven, and anon falleth like a crab on the face of terra—the soil, the land, the earth. [A-side glance at the heights and depths of the incongruities which are ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... be much less than when the land is infested with perennials at the time of sowing. The former may be prevented from seeding by clipping back frequently, while the latter remain in the soil, increase from year to year, and injure the plants by crowding. Where crab grass grows abundantly, as in some parts of the South, unless the alfalfa is sown and cultivated, spring sowing ought to be avoided. But it is less objectionable to sow alfalfa on land that is weedy when the adaptation of the land for the crop is high than when it is low, as the alfalfa ...
— Clovers and How to Grow Them • Thomas Shaw
... was not by a little pruning or weeding that France, according to his original proposition, had bettered our native literature—it was by genial incubation, by acts of vital creation. She, upon our crab-tree cudgel of Agincourt, had engrafted her own peaches and apricots—our sterile thorn France had inoculated with roses. English literature was the Eve that, in the shape of a rib, had been abstracted from the ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... produced from the right kinds of apples. The names of new sorts are legion, but some of the old varieties are still considered to be very valuable. Among these, the Foxwhelp has been a favourite for 200 years, and others in great esteem are Skyrme's Kernal, Forest Styre, Hagloe Crab, Dymock Red, Bromley, Cowarne Red, and Styre Wilding. It requires about twenty "pots" (a local measure each weighing 64 pounds) to make a hogshead of cider; a hogshead is roughly 100 gallons, and in Worcestershire is hardly recognizable under the ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... pack seals are plentiful and spend long hours asleep on the floes. The commonest kind is the crab-eater or white seal, but the Ross seal is not rare, and there and there is found the sea-leopard, ranging wide and preying on the penguins and even on the young of its less powerful brethren. It is curious to observe that both seals and penguins regard themselves as ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... own soul from fairy fringe to fringe, Lured by the twinkling prey 'twas born to reach In its own pool, by many an elfin beach Of jewels, adventuring far Through the last mirrored cloud and sunset-tinge And past the rainbow-dripping cave where lies The dark green pirate-crab at watch with ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... Cunard steamers sat next me, and seeing my distress over a plateful of very large oysters, whispered, "you need not eat them." We had carefully abstained from luncheon, as dinner was at four o'clock, and this was the menu for dinner: soup, big oysters, boiled cod, then devilled crab (which I ate, and it was very good), then very tough stewed beef-steak, large blocks of ice-cream, and peaches, and that was all! So my dinner consisted of crab, and I was obliged to have something to eat on our return to the hotel. Mr. ...
— The British Association's visit to Montreal, 1884: Letters • Clara Rayleigh
... said that certain objects drawn from the sea have a certain value for gross purposes on account of the similarity of their names. On this analogy why should not a stone be good for diseases of the bladder, a shell for the making of a will, a crab for a cancer, seaweed for an ague? Really, Claudius Maximus, in listening to these appallingly long-winded accusations to their very close you have shown a patience that is excessive and a kindness which is too long-suffering. For my part when ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... hard showers of rain and hail, the wind at north. Shot several sea-gulls, geese, hawks, and other birds: The carpenter had this day given him by one of the people, a fine large rock crab, it being the first of the kind we ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... unknown in London. Then, after long rovings ashore or afloat, these diners came back with a new light shed upon them—that of the moon outside the house, of the supper candles inside. There was sure to be a crab or lobster ready, and a dish of prawns sprigged with parsley; if the sea were beginning to get cool again, a keg of philanthropic oysters; or if these were not hospitably on their hinges yet, certainly there would be choice-bodied creatures, dried with ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... kind of crustie shell fishe which is good meate, about a foote in breadth, hauing a crustie tayle, many legges like a crab; and her eyes in her backe. They are founde in shallowes of salt waters; and sometime ...
— A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land Of Virginia • Thomas Hariot
... although it assuredly is one of the Caribbean Islands. If you are unfortunate enough to speak in favour of any of the other West Indian Islands in their presence, they immediately exclaim, "Me tankey my God dat I needer Crab nor Creole, but true Barbadeen born." They drawl out their words most horribly. I happened one day to hear two of the dignity ladies of Bridge Town, as black as ink, returning the salutations of the morning. The first began by drawling out, "How you do dis maurning. ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... crabs of all sizes, the grating noise of whose armour would sometimes keep me awake. But they were well watched by my dog; and if any one ventured to approach, he was sure to be suddenly siezed, and thrown to a more respectful distance; or if a crab of more tremendous appearance deterred the dog from exposing his nose to its claws, he would bark and frighten it away, by which, however, I was often more seriously alarmed than the occasion required. Many a comfortable night's rest have I had in these sepulchral dormitories, when the ...
— Letters on the Nicobar islands, their natural productions, and the manners, customs, and superstitions of the natives • John Gottfried Haensel
... me, no," answered Mrs. Flagg. "My pocket's so remote, in case I should desire to sneeze or anything, that I thought 't would be convenient for carrying my handkerchief and pocket-book; an' then I just tucked in a couple o' glasses o' my crab-apple jelly for Mis' Timms. She used to be a great hand for preserves of every sort, an' I thought 't would be a kind of an attention, an' give rise to conversation. I know she used to make excellent drop-cakes when we was both residin' to Longport; folks ...
— The Life of Nancy • Sarah Orne Jewett
... think him cut out from the poisonous yew, Beneath whose ill shade no plant ever grew. Some say he's a birch, a thought very odd; For none but a dunce would come under his rod. But I'll tell the secret; and pray do not blab: He is an old stump, cut out of a crab; And England has put this crab to a hard use, To cudgel our bones, and for drink give us ver-juice; And therefore his witnesses justly may boast, That none are more properly knights of the post, But here Mr. Wood complains ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... day and the next, unable to get out and catch any more fish. By this time our stock was completely exhausted—indeed, for the last day it had been scarcely eatable. While two of the men remained on shore to collect salt from the rocks, the rest of us went off, and with the crab-bait soon caught a large quantity of fish. In two days we got as many as we could well carry. Some of these were salted, others were smoked over the fire. We didn't fail, as may be supposed, to pay frequent visits to our look-out place on the rock. Day after day went by and ...
— Peter Trawl - The Adventures of a Whaler • W. H. G. Kingston
... of drill on the hot sands of Tampa; the long, long, hot wait on the transport in the harbour; the stuffy, ill-smelling breath of the hold, when the wind was wrong; the march along the coast and the grewsome life over and around him—buzzard and strange bird in the air, and crab and snail and lizard and scorpion and hairy tarantula scuttling through the tropical green rushes along the path. And the hunger and thirst and heat and dirt and rolling sweat of the last day's march and every detail of the day's fight; the stench ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... time to inquire what kind of patties were inviting the passer-by on Mr Altham's counter. They were a very large variety: oyster, crab, lobster, anchovy, and all kinds of fish; sausage-rolls, jelly, liver, galantine, and every sort of meat; ginger, honey, cream, fruit; cheese-cakes, almond and lemon; little open tarts called bry ...
— The White Lady of Hazelwood - A Tale of the Fourteenth Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... in that stall and get fat; when he is fat enough I shall eat him." Grethel began to cry, but it was all useless, for the old witch made her do as she wished. So a nice meal was cooked for Hansel, but Grethel got nothing but a crab's claw. ...
— Grimm's Fairy Stories • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
... of the word hasami in the fifth line is a very good example of keny[o]gen. There is a noun hasami, meaning the nippers of a crab, or a pair of scissors; and there is a verb hasami, meaning to harbor, to cherish, or to entertain. (Ikon wo hasamu means "to harbor resentment against.") Reading the word only in connection with those which follow it, we have the phrase hasami mochik['e]ri, "got claws;" ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... it the adventurer, the player of the confidence trick or the three-card trick, the robber of the widow and the orphan. Be smooth-tongued, and the Englishman will withdraw from you as quickly as may be, walking sideways like a crab, and looking askance at you with panic in his eyes. But stammer and blurt to him, and he will fall straight under the spell of your transparent honesty. A silly superstition; but there it is, ineradicable; and through it, undoubtedly, has come the house of Commons manner. Sometimes, ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... times, seated on his back, {like} a horseman, {first} in this direction and {then} in that, thou didst guide his easy mouth with the purple bridle. 'Twas summer and the middle of the day, and the bending arms of the Crab, that loves the sea-shore, were glowing with the heat of the sun; the stag, fatigued, was reclining his body on the grassy earth, and was enjoying the coolness from the shade of a tree. By inadvertence the boy Cyparissus pierced him with a sharp javelin; and, when he saw him dying from the cruel ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... morphia. Individual variations play an important part also; thus, shellfish are poisonous for certain individuals and not so for others. Owing to the variability of living structures a substance may be poisonous at one time and not at another, as the following example shows. A man, very fond of crab meat, was once violently poisoned after eating crabs, being at that time seemingly in his usual state of health, and no illness resulted in others who had partaken of the same crabs. Two months later a hearty meal of crabs produced no ill result. There are also individuals so constituted ...
— Disease and Its Causes • William Thomas Councilman
... a crab of fair size, perhaps six inches across the shell. Half-way between where they stood and the crab, right on the edge of the water, was a small octopus with its large, glaring, green eyes fixed on the ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... characterized by its author, five years later, in a fantastic note appended to a copy of it, as 'the only remaining crab of the shapely Tree of Life in my Fool's Paradise.' This name is ill bestowed upon a work which, however wild a fruit of Mr. Browning's genius, contains, in its many lines of exquisite fancy and deep pathos, so much that is rich and sweet. It had also, to discard ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... their unholy decoctions, or such as the dreadful giants that formed the nightmare of my childhood might have used in preparing those Brobdignagian repasts among the ingredients of which a plump child held the same rank as a crab in ours. ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... hung on the boughs, with their backs downwards. They also found, in vast numbers, large land crabs, which lived in colonies under the roots of trees, but never, as far as they could see, entered the water. They accordingly called this place Crab Island. ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... bura crab. Hazur, hum, do admi jaldi Lhassa giao." (The Shokas are bad. The Hunyas are very bad. Your honor and I, we two alone, will go quickly by ourselves ...
— An Explorer's Adventures in Tibet • A. Henry Savage Landor
... form, many of them were below size, gnarled, cracked or undeveloped and abnormal. Most all of them had rough blotches or rings about the calix or around the body. Malformed apples were picked not larger than a crab, with rough, cracked, leather-like skin, which looked more like a black walnut than ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various
... robber observed her, of course, on wading back to land, but passed her with contemptuous indifference, as if she had been merely an over-grown crab or lobster. But Kannoa determined not to be left to die on the shore. She rose, squeezed the water out of her garments and followed the robber, whom she soon found in the bushes with his companions eagerly discussing their future plans. Nunaga was seated on the ground ...
— Red Rooney - The Last of the Crew • R.M. Ballantyne
... hermit crab has taken possession of a sea snail's shell, and set up housekeeping; with body partly hidden he waves his long bony tentacles, while his beady eyes stare at us from the doorway of ...
— Byways Around San Francisco Bay • William E. Hutchinson
... of them is familiar to horsemen in the south of England under the name of forest-fly; and, to some, of side-fly, from its running sideways like a crab. It creeps under the tails, and about the groins, of horses, which, at their first coming out of the north, are rendered half frantic by the tickling sensation; while our own breed ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... croaks. Then off it went again, its tremendous leap carrying it far into the fog. Suddenly, Cap'n Bill tripped and would have fallen flat had not Trot and Button-Bright held him up. Then he saw that he had stumbled over the claw of a gigantic land-crab, which lay sprawled out upon the ...
— Sky Island - Being the further exciting adventures of Trot and Cap'n - Bill after their visit to the sea fairies • L. Frank Baum
... They may well be angry, for it is all Lombard Street to a china orange that the School-house kick a goal with the ball touched in such a good place. Old Brooke, of course, will kick it out, but who shall catch and place it? Call Crab Jones. Here he comes, sauntering along with a straw in his mouth, the queerest, coolest fish in Rugby. If he were tumbled into the moon this minute, he would just pick himself up without taking his hands out of his pockets or turning a hair. But it is a moment when the boldest charger's heart beats ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... Spanish, Graeco-Italian and miscellaneous German, English aristocratic and English plebeian. Here certainly was a striking admission of human equality. The white bejewelled fingers of an English countess were very near touching a bony, yellow, crab-like hand stretching a bared wrist to clutch a heap of coin—a hand easy to sort with the square, gaunt face, deep-set eyes, grizzled eyebrows, and ill-combed scanty hair which seemed a slight metamorphosis of the vulture. And where else would her ladyship have graciously ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... successful if, all of a sudden, one of the rowers had not "caught a crab" with disastrous consequences. The oars were not moving, but a veteran, who looked very much like Joe, dropped the one he held, and in trying to turn and pummel the black-eyed warrior behind him, he tumbled off his seat, ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... attendance. But what the painted warrior was looking for was a crystal box on a shelf to Raf's left. When he had pointed that out to an underling he was off again, and Raf was free to continue his crab's progress. ...
— Star Born • Andre Norton
... he said as loudly as he could, in the hope that the owner of the mysterious voice would hear him. Nobody answered him; but he wondered why an old crab, who was shuffling along the beach, chose that particular moment ...
— All the Way to Fairyland - Fairy Stories • Evelyn Sharp
... with the greatest ease. On opening the animal, we fully expected to discover the limbs of some of the natives, who we assured ourselves had crossed over to our side the water; but we only found a crab that had been so recently swallowed that some of our people made no hesitation in eating it for their supper. The night passed without our being disturbed by or ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia - Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 • Phillip Parker King
... food, it is the direct gift of God to man in fully-developed state. Other fruits of the earth are given to man in a wild state, and he must improve them by care and cultivation, till the wild vine is turned into the rich wine-producing plant of the vineyard, and the sour crab into the delicious apple. It is not the case with corn. No one, says a writer, whose thoughts I am following, has ever discovered wild corn. Ages ago, when the Pharaohs reigned in Egypt, and the Pyramids were a'building, men sowed just the ...
— The Life of Duty, v. 2 - A year's plain sermons on the Gospels or Epistles • H. J. Wilmot-Buxton
... v. M.; called also Native Nectarine and Native Quince. Petalostigma quadriloculare, F. v. M.; called also Crab-tree, Native ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... half out, though, and he swore he'd cremate every Khye-Kheen and Malo't he killed. That made the Jemadar pretty wild, because he didn't mind fighting against his own creed, but he wasn't going to crab a fellow Mussulman's chances of Paradise. Then Stalky jabbered Pushtu and Punjabi in alternate streaks. Where the deuce did he pick up ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... Maids heard the goblins cry: "Come buy our orchard fruits, Come buy, come buy: Apples and quinces, Lemons and oranges, Plump unpecked cherries, Melons and raspberries, Bloom-down-cheeked peaches, Swart-headed mulberries, Wild free-born cranberries, Crab-apples, dewberries, Pine-apples, blackberries, Apricots, strawberries;— All ripe together In summer weather,— Morns that pass by, Fair eves that fly; Come buy, come buy: Our grapes fresh from the vine, Pomegranates ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... crustaceans the anterior legs are developed into chelae or pincers; and these are generally larger in the male than in the female,—so much so that the market value of the male edible crab (Cancer pagurus), according to Mr. C. Spence Bate, is five times as great as that of the female. In many species the chelae are of unequal size on the opposite side of the body, the right-hand one being, as I am informed ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... write down in my book my judgment, which would invariably be: "First Prize." Because if there is anything on top of this green earth that I think is just about right, it is currant jelly. Grape jelly is nice, and crab-apple jelly has its good points, and quince jelly is very delicate, but there is something about currant jelly that seems to touch the spot. Quince preserves are good if there is enough apple with the quince, and watermelon preserves are a great favorite, not because they are so much better tasting, ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... to do something dam' quick," said Slater, "or else the work will be tied up. That would 'crab' Murray's deal. I've got a pick-handle that's itching for Linn's head." The speaker coughed hollowly and complained: "I've got a bad cold on my chest—feels like pneumonia, to me. Wouldn't ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... shrimp; scallops; lobster or crab meat 2 tablespoons butter 1 tablespoon flour 1 cup milk 2 hard boiled eggs 1 teaspoon salt cayenne pepper to taste 1/4 ...
— The New Dr. Price Cookbook • Anonymous
... precious wonder, Master Crab. Squirt thy verjuice, when thou art roasting, some other way. I wonder what man-ape thy mother watch'd i' the breeding. She had been special fond o' children, I ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... formerly burnt in the hand for stealing, had gone forth a poor man and come back master and half owner of a ship. The ship was seized, condemned, and sold for the crown, and Sims committed to jail. He had sailed as master of a sloop to Curacao, and thence to Crab Island (Vieques, see doc. no. 72, note 5). Ibid., 499. Bellomont suspected that what he found there in August had been derived from ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... one day Was fishing in Chesapeake Bay; Said a crab to his mate, "Let's kick off the bait, This business is too ...
— Poems for Pale People - A Volume of Verse • Edwin C. Ranck
... into some eel- grass, near the shore, and we had no trouble in getting it. Beside the bags, there were in the canoe some large sheets of paper, torn out of a sketch book. These were covered with pictures of the horse-shoe crabs,—drawn in a very amusing fashion. One sketch showed an old crab, wearing a mob-cap and sitting up ...
— The Voyage of the Hoppergrass • Edmund Lester Pearson
... laughter and the sound of a hundred footfalls in unison, while, from the open windows there issued a warm breath, heavily laden with the smell of scented fans, of rich fabrics, of dying roses, to mingle with the spicy perfume of a wild crab-tree in fullest blossom, which stood near enough to peer into the ball-room, and, like a brocaded belle herself, challenge the richest to show raiment as fine, the loveliest to look as fair and ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... devout father's eye, immediately grinned such a ghastly smile, and winked his remaining eye with such diabolical intensity of meaning that the Padre was constrained to utter a pious ejaculation, which had the disastrous effect of causing the marine Cocles to "catch a crab," throwing his heels in the air and his head into the bottom of the boat. But even this accident did not disturb the gravity of the rest ...
— Legends and Tales • Bret Harte
... Crab catching at night on the Yaquina Bay by the coast Indians was a very picturesque scene. It was mostly done by the squaws and children, each equipped with a torch in one hand, and a sharp-pointed stick in the other to ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 1 • Philip H. Sheridan
... us in his 'Samoa') each family has its own sacred animal, which it may not eat. If this law be transgressed, the malefactor is supernaturally punished in a variety of ways. But, while each family has thus its totem, four or five different families recognise, in owl, crab, lizard, and so on, incarnations of the same god, say of Tongo. If Tongo had a temple among these families, we can readily believe that images of the various beasts in which he was incarnate would be kept within the consecrated walls. Savage ideas like these, if they were ever entertained ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang
... the world" (498. 90). With these people also the first woman was chan.a.e.lewadi (Mother E-lewadi), the ancestress of the present race of natives. She was drowned, while canoeing, and "became a small crab of a description still named after her e.lewadi" ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... his blouse and stuffed it into the opening, pulling the dirt over it noiselessly, and in a few minutes there was little surface evidence of the hole. He then backed into the cellar in the usual crab fashion, and gave directions for the required depression of the tunnel and vigorous resumption of the work. The hole made in the roof of the tunnel was not much larger than a rat-hole and could not be seen from the prison. But the next night Rose shoved an old shoe ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... leave the dog on board with safety; and, as for taking him on shore with him, in that there was much danger, for the widow Vandersloosh had set her face against the dog. No wonder: he had behaved in her parlour as bad as the dog Crab in the Two Gentlemen of Verona; and the Frau was a very clean person, and had no fancy for dogs comparing their legs with those of her polished mahogany chairs and tables. If Mr Vanslyperken's suit was to be decided according to the old adage, "love me, love my dog," he certainly had but ...
— Snarley-yow - or The Dog Fiend • Frederick Marryat
... the fruit, though all within narrow limits; so may change of circumstances a little affect an author's writings, but only within a certain range. The apple-tree may produce a somewhat different apple; but it will never producn an orange, neither will it yield a crab. ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... most down-and-outs," affirmed Father Roland, cheerfully. "That's one reason for the peculiar psychological value of beans. They begin to tell you when you're getting weaned away from a lobster palate and a stuffed-crab stomach, and when you get to the point where you want 'em on your regular bill of fare you'll find more fun in chopping down a tree than in going to a grand opera. But the beans must be cooked right, David—browned ...
— The Courage of Marge O'Doone • James Oliver Curwood
... more particularly was an awful-looking crimson and grey spider as big as a soft-shell crab. He was squatting on a bone in one corner, glaring at her with his little evil eyes, and moving his horizontal mandibles as if he would dearly like to ...
— Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure • Gordon Stables
... which a sweeping movement might be made from the north at the same moment as one from the south-east. A glance at the map will show that a force moving from this point in conjunction with another from Lydenburg might form the two crooked claws of a crab to enclose a great space of country, in which smaller columns might collect whatever was to be found. Without an instant of unnecessary delay the dispositions were made, and no fewer than eight columns slipped upon the chase. It will be best to continue to follow the movements of ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... borrow money, nor twist your kittens neck off, or disturb a congregation, &c.— your business is done. I know things (thoughts or things, thoughts are things) of myself which would make every friend I have fly me as a plague patient. I once * * *, and set a dog upon a crab's leg that was shoved out under a moss of sea weeds, a pretty little feeler.—Oh! pah! how sick I am of that; and a lie, a mean one, I once told!— I stink in the ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... to protest, but Buck Ogilvy reached around the half-opened door and kicked him in the shins. "Don't crab my game, you miserable snarley-yow. Detract one speck from that girl's pleasure, and you'll never see that temporary franchise," he threatened. "I will not work for a quitter—so, there!" And with his ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... with their great pink flowers, "the pretty Thomisus, the little crab-spider, clad in satin," watches for the domestic bee, and suddenly kills it, seizing the back of the head, while the Philanthus, also seizing it by the head, plunges its sting under the chin, neither too high ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... whose judgment on his own work was one of the best in the world, took this view of Pauline in after years is quite obvious. He displayed a very manly and unique capacity of really laughing at his own work without being in the least ashamed of it. "This," he said of Pauline, "is the only crab apple that remains of the shapely tree of life in my fool's paradise." It would be difficult to express the matter more perfectly. Although Pauline was published anonymously, its authorship was known to a certain circle, and Browning began to form friendships in the literary world. ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... crab and nick nest: the pip and bone quarry: the rafflearium: the trumpery: the blaspheming box: the elbow shaking shop: the wholesale ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... An edible gray crab. The favorite time for taking these crabs is when the high tide or surf forces them to ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... made friends. One's never seen without the other.... It's a fact, indeed—where the horse puts its hoof, there the crab sticks its claw.' ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev
... beheld the vast parterre of Orion with its central motif of vivid forget-me-nots, its far-flung blooms of Betelguese and Rigel, of Bellatrix and Saiph ... And higher yet—and there flamed the exquisite flower beds of Taurus and Gemini, there burgeoned the riotous wreath of the Crab; there lay the pulsing petals of the Pleiades ... And down the ecliptic garden path, wafted by a stellar breeze, drifted the ocher rose of ...
— Star Mother • Robert F. Young
... said, his visage shone with beams divine, And more than mortal was his voice's sound, Godfredo's thought to other acts incline, His working brain was never idle found. But in the Crab now did bright Titan shine, And scorched with scalding beams the parched ground, And made unfit for toil or warlike feat His soldiers, weak with ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... Jelly Red Currant Jelly Black Currant Jelly Gooseberry Jelly Grape Jelly Peach Jelly Preserved Quinces Preserved Pippins Preserved Peaches Preserved Crab-Apples Preserved Plums Preserved Strawberries Preserved Cranberries Preserved ...
— Seventy-Five Receipts for Pastry Cakes, and Sweetmeats • Miss Leslie
... worked into deep, glutinous ruts, and the low-lying parts were under water. Mahony, but a fairish hand with the reins, was repeatedly obliged to leave the track and take to the bush, where he steered a way as best he could through trees, stumps, boulders and crab-holes. Sometimes he rose to his feet to encourage the horse; or he alighted and pulled it by the bridle; or put a shoulder to the wheel. But to-day no difficulties had power to daunt him; and the farther he ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... hilly field, five miles south of Crab Orchard. From Perryville to this place, there has been each day occasional cannonading; but this morning I have heard no guns. The Cumberland mountains are in sight. We are pushing forward as fast probably as it is possible for a great army to move. Buell is here superintending ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... a Dinner once in a while, just to subdue the Wife and Daughter of the National Bank, but the Crew would nearly always crab ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade
... is thin and tall. His long hair, always in disorder, is worn so for effect. This ill-combed, ill-made Byron has heron legs and stiffened knee-joints, an exaggerated stoop, hands with knotty muscles, firm as a crab's claws, and long, thin, wiry fingers. Raoul's eyes are Napoleonic, blue eyes, which pierce to the soul; his nose is crooked and very shrewd; his mouth charming, embellished with the whitest teeth that any woman could desire. There is fire and movement ...
— A Daughter of Eve • Honore de Balzac
... him in the way of decoration but a watch, which was lowered into the depths of its proper pocket by an old black ribbon, and had a tarnished copper key moored above it, to show where it was sunk. His head was awry, and he had a one-sided, crab-like way with him, as if his foundations had yielded at about the same time as those of the house, and he ought to have been propped up ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... and Crab once took their station In harness, and would drag a loaded cart; But, when the moment came for ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... when he brought up the matter one day.—"Sure, how can I till where he or any other mother's son is that I can't say before my eyes? I can till you, though, where I belaives him to be this blissid minnit; an' that is, by the 'Crab an' Lobster' at Gravesend, lookin' out for to say if he can say the Silver ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... turbot! crabs crawling all alive, alive, oh! Shrimps do you want? Fine shrimps, the very best! Here you are, buy! buy!' and so on, everyone shouting out to make the fishmongers buy their fish. Perhaps a crab crawls too near the edge of his stall, and falls over with a crash, and the man who owns him picks him up and throws him back, and off jumps Master Crab again as quick as you please, and does just the same ...
— The Children's Book of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... was gathered from every cotil, and dried for apple-storing, for bedding for the cherished cow, for back-rests for the veilles, and seats round the winter fire; when peaches, apricots, and nectarines made the walls sumptuous red and gold; when the wild plum and crab-apple flourished in secluded roadways, and the tamarisk dropped its brown pods upon the earth. And all ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... of the first eminence, in whose day (fortunately perhaps for me) I was not destined to appear before the public, or to abide the Herculean crab-tree of his criticism, Dr. Johnson, has said, in his preface to Shakspeare, that—"Nothing can please many, and please long, but just representations of general nature." My representations of nature, whatever may be said of their justness, are not general, unless we admit, what ...
— Wild Flowers - Or, Pastoral and Local Poetry • Robert Bloomfield
... fer true," commented the Savannah negro; "he no like Sawanny. Down da, we set need de shade an' eaty de rice-bud, an' de crab, an' de swimp tree time de day; an' de buckra man drinky him wine, an' smoky him seegyar all troo de night. Plenty fer eat an' ...
— Uncle Remus • Joel Chandler Harris
... Fuselli's spine as he went back to the stove to drink the chocolate. Of course he mustn't crab. He was in the war now. If the sergeant had heard him crabbing, it might have spoiled his chances for a corporalship. He must be careful. If he just watched out and kept on his toes, he'd be ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... orange, fig, olive, pine apple, &c. find a genial climate about New Orleans. High in the north we have the birch, hemlock, fir, and other trees peculiar to a cold region. Amongst our fruit bearing trees we may enumerate the walnut, hickory or shag bark, persimmon, pecan, mulberry, crab apple, pawpaw, wild plum, and wild cherry. The vine grows everywhere. Of the various species of oak, elm, ash, linden, hackberry, &c. it is unnecessary to speak. Where forests abound, the trees are tall and majestic. In the prairie ...
— A New Guide for Emigrants to the West • J. M. Peck
... of the Zodiac lived in the world. There were six Children of the Zodiac—the Ram, the Bull, the Lion, the Twins, and the Girl; and they were afraid of the Six Houses which belonged to the Scorpion, the Balance, the Crab, the Fishes, the Goat, and the Waterman. Even when they first stepped down upon the earth and knew that they were immortal Gods, they carried this fear with them; and the fear grew as they became better acquainted ...
— Kipling Stories and Poems Every Child Should Know, Book II • Rudyard Kipling
... person in Issoudun who thought it wrong that Flore Brazier should be queen over Jean-Jacques Rouget and his home. She protested against the immorality of the connection, and took a tone of injured virtue; the fact being that she was humiliated by having, at her age, a crab-girl for a mistress,—a child who had been brought barefoot into the house. Fanchette owned three hundred francs a year in the Funds, for the doctor made her invest her savings in that way, and he had left her as much more ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... righteous actions that make a righteous man; nor be they evil actions that make a wicked man: for a tree must be a sweeting tree before it yield sweetings;23 and a crab tree ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... crab my meeting a pretty girl, Holly! Introduce me, and I'll take the water and go. Be a sport!" Elfigo had picked up his five-gallon desert bag, but he was obviously waiting for Helen May to ride up ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... cold praties off a dresser." He is now leading in a girl, handsome no doubt, but who, nevertheless, does not possess sixpence, or sixpence worth for her portion. Not so the sword-fish we have pointed out to you a while ago, the tail of whose short coat lay as closely to him as that of a crab. The cassoway has secured a girl who, in point of wealth and dower, will be the making of him. However, you know the secret, Solomon says that a soft answer turneth away wrath; but what will not a soft question do, when put to a pretty girl, where ...
— Lha Dhu; Or, The Dark Day - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... state. Nevertheless, I do not imply that they must necessarily remain useless. Where Nature simply creates a genus, cultivation extends the species, and from an insignificant parent stock we propagate our finest varieties of both animals and vegetables. Witness the wild kale, parsnip, carrot, crab-apple, sloe, etc., all utterly worthless, but nevertheless the first parents of their ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... tree are under obligation. His chapter on Wild Apples is a most delicious piece of writing. It has a "tang and smack" like the fruit it celebrates, and is dashed and streaked with color in the same manner. It has the hue and perfume of the crab, and the richness and raciness of the pippin. But Thoreau loved other apples than the wild sorts, and was obliged to confess that his favorites could not be eaten indoors. Late in November he found a blue-pearmain ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... tell, child,—he might talk Sam Deacon into letting us keep the house, at least. We've got to live somewhere, you know, Faith. It's no sort of use for me to talk to him,—he's as stiff as a crab tree—and I aint. I ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... ratsbane, doomsday, kinswoman, craftsmaster. (5.) The possessive case and its governing noun, combining to form a metaphorical name, should be written with both apostrophe and hyphen; as, Job's-tears, Jew's-ear, bear's-foot, colts-tooth, sheep's-head, crane's-bill, crab's-eyes, hound's-tongue, king's-spear, lady's-slipper, lady's-bedstraw, &c. (6.) The possessive case and its governing noun, combining to form an adjective, whether literal or metaphorical, should generally ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... peer, who had expended a large fortune, summoned his heir to his death-bed, and told him that he had a secret of great importance to impart to him, which might be some compensation for the injury he had done him. The secret was that crab sauce was ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... individual feature was the large and enterprising family of "wind stoels"—dear, cozy basket-houses for one, like green and yellow bee-hives cut in half, or giant sunbonnets crowding the beach behind the bathing-machines. There one could nestle, self-contained as a hermit-crab in a shell, defying east wind or baking sun, happy with a book, or the person one liked best in ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... in the brewing copper, the ale was sure to be spoiled. When a few good neighbors were met to drink some comfortable ale together, Puck would jump into the bowl of ale in the likeness of a roasted crab, and when some old goody was going to drink he would bob against her lips, and spill the ale over her withered chin; and presently after, when the same old dame was gravely seating herself to tell her neighbors a sad ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... think she belonged to the same general class and order with Don Quixote's renowned Rosinante; but she had one peculiarity which is not put down in the description of Rosinante, to wit, the faculty of diagonal or oblique locomotion. This mare of Peter's went forward something after the manner of a crab, and a little like a ship with the wind abeam, as the sailors say. It was a standing topic of dispute among us boys, whether the animal went head foremost or not. But that did not matter much, so that she made her circuit—and she always did, punctually; that is, she ...
— Wreaths of Friendship - A Gift for the Young • T. S. Arthur and F. C. Woodworth
... of the city of Vienna, in the vicinity of the fortifications, there still stands an old house. It is evidently a public house, for there hangs the sign—"At the Red Crab." Beside this there is a marble tablet fastened above the doorway, which says that Franz Schubert was born in this house. At the right of his name is placed a lyre crowned with a star, and at the left a laurel wreath within which is placed the date, ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... which we affected only in the autumn, for then we gathered crab-apples, of a yellow and pink, most delightful to the eye. And also the particular variety of blackberry which ripens first, and is large and of irregular shape, but, to the common blackberry, what purple grapes are to the thin, green variety. And again, there was the front lawn, where the quicken-berry ...
— An Isle in the Water • Katharine Tynan
... vegetation had scented us out and, having found us, was quite determined that we should never escape them alive. When presently we again began to move, it seemed impossible to take a single step without tripping over a land-crab's hole, or treading upon one of the creatures and hearing and feeling it crackle and writhe underfoot. ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... thing"— She spread her eyes and elbows suddenly in the manner of a crab, with palms turned upward and ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... Protestant Christianity still preserving a memento of the world-old and universal belief in a crowd of malicious spirits, prepared at every moment to take up their residence in the convenient shelter of the human frame, as a hermit crab watches for a suitable shell in which to make his home. It must be owned that the volume of observances connected with infancy, here presented, is very inadequate; it is certain that a nurse of a century ago would have been familiar with a vastly more extensive array of duties and ...
— Current Superstitions - Collected from the Oral Tradition of English Speaking Folk • Various |
