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More "Gnaw" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... now, heavy, as from sustained exertion, making almost an undertone of the steady click-click-click of the ratchet, and the sullen gnaw of the bit. The minutes passed. The flashlight went on again—and Jimmie Dale strained forward. Two dark forms, backs to him, were outlined against the face of the safe which was at the far side of the room, a nickel dial glistened ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... the Animal, which, by other observations I have made, I ghess to contain it, and become, as it were a womb to it, so long, till it be fit and prepar'd to be translated into another state, at what time, like (what they say of) Vipers, they gnaw their way through the womb that bred them; divers of these kinds I have met with upon Goosberry leaves, Rose-tree leaves, Willow leaves, ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... in the thicket opposite, cutting brush. We saw many large trees which had been cut down by them. The stumps looked as though some boy had chopped them down with a dull axe. It is surprising to reflect upon the pertinacity of these creatures which enables them to gnaw down such immense trees, and the wisdom with which they calculate the direction in ...
— Illustrated Science for Boys and Girls • Anonymous
... would try to push them through; failing in that, he would go through and then try to pull them after him. All night he or his companion seems to have kept up this futile attempt, fumbling and dropping the nut every few minutes. It never occurred to the mouse to gnaw the hole larger, as it would instantly have done had the hole been too small to admit its own body. It could not project its mind thus far; it could not get out of itself sufficiently to regard the nut in its relation to the hole, and it is doubtful if any four-footed animal is capable ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... "Oh, gnaw them out of a tree!" cried Mr. Pertell, who was much disturbed and nervous. "Don't you see that fence?" he cried, pointing to one not far off. "Get some rails from that. And ...
— The Moving Picture Girls Snowbound - Or, The Proof on the Film • Laura Lee Hope
... oblong, flat cake, crossed with lines, and rounded at the corners, made of dough, lard, sugar, and spice. Our ancestors liked something to gnaw at, and did not go in for lightness in their pastry; they liked something to stick to their teeth, and after that to their ribs. The lardy-cake eminently fulfilled these conditions; they put a trifle of sugar and spice in it, to set it going as it were, ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... mate; but Jan did not miss her a scrap. At present there was not an ounce of sentiment in his composition. He was kept warm, he lay snugly soft, and his stomach was generally full. He had great gristly bones to gnaw and play with, and Betty Murdoch, with a little solid-rubber ball, played with him also by the hour together. Beyond these things Jan had no thought or desire at present. He grew fast, and enjoyed every minute of ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... and stroked the bow-bearer's hand, a condescension which made the footstool-bearer, parasol-bearer, quiver-bearer, and a dozen great lords more gnaw their lips with envy. Hydarnes, the commander who had waited an auspicious moment, now thought it safe to kneel on the ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... like an animal is to rely upon one's own quite naked equipment and efforts, and not to mind getting wet or cold or scratching one's bare legs in the underbrush. One would have to eat his roots and seeds quite raw, and gnaw a bird as a cat does. To get the feel of uncivilized life, let us recall how savages with the comparatively advanced degree of culture reached by our native Indian tribes may fall to when really ...
— The Mind in the Making - The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform • James Harvey Robinson
... fish nor fowl can penetrate them. Old stalks succumb slowly; the bed soil is quagmire, settling with the weight as it fills and fills. Too slowly for counting they raise little islands from the bog and reclaim the land. The waters pushed out cut deeper channels, gnaw off the edges ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... I won't," he began, then, feebly surrendering to the gnaw of desire, he reached hastily for the glass, as if in fear that it would ...
— A Son Of The Sun • Jack London
... most, if not all, of the figures on this plate (Tro. 29) are intended to represent the injurious and destructive agencies to which maize and other cultivated plants were subject. Birds and quadrupeds pull up the sprouting seed and pull down and devour the ripening grain; worms gnaw the roots and winds break down the stalks, one out of four escaping injury and giving full return to the planter. The latter is therefore probably the correct interpretation, the only difficult feature being the presence of ...
— Day Symbols of the Maya Year • Cyrus Thomas
... lying toward the east. The one tooth found (a molar) was worn entirely below the enamel except for a small space at the front; the dentine was polished until it resembled a piece of agate. Mr. De Lancey Gill first remarked the fact that wear of this character denotes that the individual did not gnaw bones, crack nuts, or indeed bite hard on any substance. If he had done so this thin shred of enamel would have broken off. Two large rocks which lay on the head and body seem to have been thus placed before the grave was filled ...
— Archeological Investigations - Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 76 • Gerard Fowke
... on, had no child in its sleep an indistinct perception of a guilty shadow falling on its bed, that troubled its innocent rest? Did no dog howl, and strive to break its rattling chain, that it might tear him; no burrowing rat, scenting the work he had in hand, essay to gnaw a passage after him, that it might hold a greedy revel at the feast of his providing? When he looked back, across his shoulder, was it to see if his quick footsteps still fell dry upon the dusty pavement, or were already moist and clogged with the red mire that stained the naked ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... Liberal, Pelicier, published an edition of Voltaire, with the following title: Works of Voltaire, of the French Academy. "That will attract purchasers," said the ingenious editor. The general opinion was that M. Charles Loyson would be the genius of the century; envy was beginning to gnaw at him—a sign of glory; and this ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... tall soldier, drily; "did you ever grub on fat pork, Miss? No? Did you ever gnaw yer hard tack after a spell o' sickness, and a ten-hour march? No? P'raps you might like a streak o' mutton arterwards! P'raps you might take a notion for a couple o' chickens or so! No? How's that, Ike? What do you think, pardner? (to me) ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... to this was a long whistle of dismay. He said nothing, however, but once more applied the glasses to his eyes. Jack saw him gnaw his moustache, as he gazed out over the desert. The dust-cloud was quite close now—not more than a mile away. The boys, with their naked eyes, could easily catch the moving glint ...
— The Border Boys Across the Frontier • Fremont B. Deering
... half Cree girl. When they had gone he still saw her, and the vision troubled him. They came in again at night, when the fire was sending red and yellow lights up and down the tepee walls, and the more he watched Oachi the stronger there grew within him something that seemed to gnaw and gripe with a dull sort of pain. Oachi was beautiful. He had never seen hair like her hair. He had never before seen eyes more beautiful. He had never heard a voice so low and sweet and filled with bird-like ripples of music. She was beautiful, and yet with her beauty there was ...
— The Grizzly King • James Oliver Curwood
... gnaw your handkercher; 'twill hurt your little tongue, And if you do feel spitish, 'tis because ye are over young; But you'll be getting older, like us all, ere very long, And you'll see me as I am—a man ...
— Time's Laughingstocks and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... events how they render it impossible at this later stage. It is the young plant which absorbs the glucose, and which must therefore be destroyed; they cut off the radicle with their mandibles, and gnaw the stalk; the germ is thus suppressed. They have not yet finished their manipulations, which must enable them to preserve without further alteration the provisions which they have already rendered palatable. They ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... face; the fishing, that promised so well when I passed, having entirely failed, and no deer were to be found. He wrote me, however, that he would maintain his post while a piece of parchment remained to gnaw! ...
— Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory - Volume II. (of 2) • John M'lean
... into our haversacks, to the farm servants who inspect all our belongings when we are out on parade, and even now we have become accustomed to the very rats that scurry through the barn at midnight and gnaw at our equipment and devour our rations when they get hold of them. One night a rat bit a man's nose—but the tale is a long one and I will tell ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill
... this time her son sat opposite, observing every look and motion, yet unable himself to move. The pangs of hunger now began to gnaw within him, and from his cramped position, he became so cold that he trembled violently in every limb, despite his efforts to command himself. But Dick paid no attention whatever to him; he knew that he was strong, ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... greater peril, and the attitude of the Nationalists in the House of Commons added to the difficulties of the Government, as Mr. Bonar Law had complained in March. It was to placate them that the Convention had been summoned. It was a bone thrown to a snarling dog, and the longer there was anything to gnaw the longer would the dog keep quiet. The Ulster delegates understood this perfectly, and, as their chief desire was to help the Government to get on with the war, they had no wish to curtail the proceedings of the Convention, although they were never under the delusion that it ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill
... home and mind thy word," she had said always to him. "It is labour enough for a man to keep his own life clean and his own hands honest. Be not thou at any time as they are who are for ever telling the good God how He might have made the world on a better plan, while the rats gnaw at their hay-stacks and the children cry over an ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various
... legs and horns laid flat by its sides, and miniature wings on its back. Observe that the sides of the tail, and one pair of legs, are fringed with dark hairs. After a fortnight's rest in this prison this 'nymph' will gnaw her way out and swim through the water on her back, by means of that fringed tail and paddles, till she reaches the bank and the upper air. There, under the genial light of day, her skin will burst, and a four-winged fly emerge, to buzz over the water as ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... "Honesty is the best policy," we speak abstractly. Nobody can see or hear or touch the thing honesty or the thing policy; the apprehension of them must be purely intellectual. But if we say "The rat began to gnaw the rope," we speak concretely. Rat, gnaw, and rope are tangible, perceptible things; the words bring to us visions of particular ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... put it into his head that la Peyrade, to whom he is going to give his goddaughter and heiress, is over head and ears in debt; that he makes enormous secret loans; and that in order to get out of his difficulties he means to gnaw the newspaper to the bone; and I shall insinuate that the position of a man so much in debt must be known to the public before long, and become a fatal blow to the candidate whose right hand ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... carry the mud and stones in their fore-paws; and in one night will collect as much as amounts to many thousands of their little loads. When driftwood is not to be found, they obtain the timber they require from the groves skirting the lake or pond. To do this, they squat on their hams, and rapidly gnaw through the stems of trees from six to twelve or fourteen inches in diameter, with their powerful incisors. Sometimes a tree will not fall prostrate, the boughs being caught by its neighbours. But the beaver is not to be disappointed; ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... trees should, as already stated, have sufficient shade to prevent their being burned by the sun. If they are much exposed to its rays, their branches are scattered, crack, and the tree dies. They are also infested with worms, which gnaw the bark all around, then attack the interior and destroy them. The only remedy which has hitherto been found, is to employ people to kill these worms, which are deposited by a small, scaly winged insect, which gnaws the tree; as soon ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... Lord Normanby, was greatly taken with her. This nobleman's position was such that Captain James could not object to his attentions, though they made the husband angry to a degree. The viceroy would draw her into alcoves and engage her in flattering conversation, while poor James could only gnaw his nails and let green-eyed jealousy prey upon his heart. His only recourse was to take her into the country, where she speedily became bored; and boredom is ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... to reach up on his hind legs and gnaw the standing plant. The management of a dry and slippery corn-ear at first presented some difficulty, but, as his muscles strengthened, he found himself able to sit up on his haunches and hold it squirrel-fashion in his fore-paws, nibbling, to begin with, at the pointed end, which is the best way ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... nameless fear began to gnaw at Wilmot's vitals. And at that moment the door swung open, and he saw, beyond the bulking head and shoulders of the legless man, a narrow iron table, white and shining, in a room all glass and ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris
... the sullen, frumpish fool, That loves to be oppression's tool, May envy gnaw his rotten soul, And discontent devour him; May dool and sorrow be his chance, Dool and sorrow, dool and sorrow, Dool and sorrow be his chance, And nane say, Wae 's me for him! May dool and sorrow be his chance, Wi' a' the ills that come frae France, Wha e'er he be that winna dance The ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... to lay about fifty eggs which are deposited on both the leaves and fruit, but mostly on the calyx end of the young apples. The eggs hatch in about a week and the young larvae or caterpillars begin at once to gnaw their way into the core of the fruit. Three-fourths of them enter the ...
— Apple Growing • M. C. Burritt
... without telling about that. They must have wandered around for at least a day and a half, and in all that while they had not a drop of water, and not a thing to eat. Wait, though, at last in their desperation they did gnaw the tallow candles, and that served to keep them alive, and, in a measure, alleviate ...
— Tom Swift and his Air Glider - or, Seeking the Platinum Treasure • Victor Appleton
... with the loss of a leg; a fox, which is carnivorous, will do more; he will gnaw off his own leg to escape. Do they die in consequence? no, they live and do well; but could a man live under such circumstances? impossible. If you don't believe me, gnaw your own leg off and try. And yet the conformation of the Mammalia is not very dissimilar from our own; but man is the more perfect creature, and therefore ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... he might be attacked at once, he had made his battalion stand to arms on the shore. He walked to and fro all the length of the room, stopping sometimes to gnaw the finger-tips of his right hand with a lurid sideways glare fixed on the floor; then, with a sullen, repelling glance all round, he would resume his tramping in savage aloofness. His hat, horsewhip, sword, and revolver were lying on the table. His officers, ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... be done, and luckily Brownies can do things which nobody else can do. So he thought he would change himself into a mouse, and gnaw a hole through the door. But then he suddenly remembered the cat, who, though he had decided not to eat her, might take this opportunity of eating him. So he thought it advisable to wait till she was fast asleep, which did not happen for a good while. At length, quite ...
— The Adventures of A Brownie - As Told to My Child by Miss Mulock • Miss Mulock
... common-sense, and it is the teaching of the Bible. True, that for some, that growth will only be a growth into greater power of feeling greater sorrow. Such an one grows up into a Hercules; but it is only that the Nessus shirt may wrap round him more tightly, and may gnaw him with a fiercer agony. But whether saved or lost—he that dies is greater than when yet living; and all his powers are intensified and strengthened by that awful experience of death and by what it ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... those of the Council of State were secret, and publicity was what he dreaded above all things. He was very well pleased when he had to transmit to the Legislative Body or to the Tribunate any proposed law of trifling importance, and he used then to say that he had thrown them a bone to gnaw. ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... a palmtree, whose scales made a rustling as he creeped along. He swallowed up one of my comrades, notwithstanding his loud cries, and the efforts he made to rid himself of the serpent; which, shaking him several times against the ground, crushed him, and we could hear him gnaw and tear the poor wretch's bones, when we had fled at a great distance from him. Next day we saw the serpent again, to our great terror, when I cried out, O Heaven, to what dangers are we exposed! We rejoiced yesterday at our having escaped ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous
... that flies at noonday, that is most to be feared. It is the cold, inscrutable glance, the chilled and altered manner, the suspicion that walketh in darkness,—it is these that try the strength of woman's love, and gnaw with slow but certain tooth the cable-chain that holds the anchor of her fidelity. These are the evil spirits which prayer and fasting alone can cast out. They may fly before the uplifted eye and bended knee, ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... And he'd gnaw thro' a rope in the night-time, He'd eat thro' a wall or a door, He'd shwim thro' a lough in the winther, To be wid his ...
— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various
... seen, So soft, so nimble, and so clean; Their teeth were sharp, their eyes were bright; And when through wood she saw them gnaw As neatly, almost, as a saw, The mother's eyes beamed ...
— Surprising Stories about the Mouse and Her Sons, and the Funny Pigs. - With Laughable Colored Engravings • Unknown
... round his place of confinement several times; but not the least crack or opening could we discover, except through the bars, which being of iron, it was impossible for us to break or bend. At length we determined to try to gnaw through the wood-work close at the edge, which being already some little distance from one of the bars, we hoped, by making the opening a little wider, he would escape: accordingly we all began, he on the inside, and we all on the out, and by our diligence had made some very considerable ...
— The Life and Perambulations of a Mouse • Dorothy Kilner
... have met Kotuko the dog, and played or fought with him, for his shoulder-loop had caught in the plaited copper wire of Kotuko's collar, and had drawn tight, so that neither could get at the trace to gnaw it apart, but each was fastened sidelong to his neighbour's neck. That, with the freedom of hunting on their own account, must have helped to cure their madness. ...
— The Second Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... instructions, the lad had lain perfectly motionless and silent for over an hour, for it must have taken me at least that long to gnaw through the cords. ...
— Under the Andes • Rex Stout
... canned goods down here, some of them still perfectly sealed after all this time. The hordes of rats, wiser than they knew, had chewed at them, exposing the steel beneath the thin tin plate. And, after a while, oxidation would weaken the can to the point where some lucky rat could gnaw through the rusty spot and find himself a meal. Then he would move the empty can aside and begin gnawing at the next in line. He couldn't get through the steel, but he would scratch the tin off, and the cycle would begin again. Later, another rat would ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... he said, "follow me. Our friend, the gazelle, is caught in a net. Come and gnaw the ropes and ...
— Fifty Fabulous Fables • Lida Brown McMurry
... the seed is the one important thing and then notice how the flower protects it. First, look at the outside green covering, which we call the calyx. See how closely it fits in the bud, so that no insects can creep in to gnaw the flower, nor any harm come to it from cold or blight. Then, when the calyx opens, notice that the yellow leaves which form the crown or corolla, are each alternate with one of the calyx leaves, so that anything which got past the first covering would be stopped by the second. Lastly, ...
— The Fairy-Land of Science • Arabella B. Buckley
... so quiet and patient on their shelves, Dressed in dim brown, and black, and white, and green And every kind of colour. Which will you read? Come on; O do read something; they're so wise. I tell you all the wisdom of the world Is waiting for you on those shelves; and yet You sit and gnaw your nails, and let your pipe out, And listen to the silence: on the ceiling There's one big, dizzy moth that bumps and flutters; And in the breathless air outside the house The garden waits for something that delays. There must be crowds ...
— The War Poems of Siegfried Sassoon • Siegfried Sassoon
... hadde a space fro his care, 505 Thus to him-self ful ofte he gan to pleyne; He sayde, 'O fool, now art thou in the snare, That whilom Iapedest at loves peyne; Now artow hent, now gnaw thyn owene cheyne; Thou were ay wont eche lovere reprehende 510 Of thing fro which thou ...
— Troilus and Criseyde • Geoffrey Chaucer
... He began at once to gnaw the ropes. He had just set the gazelle free when a hunter came along. The gazelle sprang to one side into the bushes, the raven flew into a tree, and the rat ran into ...
— Fifty Fabulous Fables • Lida Brown McMurry
... score less three; so about was SHE - The maiden I wronged in Peninsular days . . . You may prate of your prowess in lusty times, But as years gnaw inward you blink your bays, And ...
— Wessex Poems and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... he recovered his good humour. "Since your heart beats for vermin, feel for the carrion crows! they be as good vermin as these; would ye send them to bed supperless, poor pretty poppets? Why, these be their larder; the pangs of hunger would gnaw them dead, but for cold cut-purse hung up ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... esteemed, pardoned him who had dared, so seriously, to insult one of his ministers. But, during the four or five days that the journey continued, they incessantly tormented him; and did not give him a fourth part of what was necessary for his support, so that the unfortunate man was frequently obliged to gnaw the bones which the Moors had thrown away; they also forced him to make the whole journey on foot; it was pretty long; for these gentlemen, on their arrival at St. Louis, estimated it at a hundred and forty leagues at the least, because the Moors made ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to Senegal in 1816 • J. B. Henry Savigny and Alexander Correard
... gathered some dead wood, made a fire in the ditch and have had a capital supper off the warm, round vegetables with which he would first of all have warmed his cold hands. But it was too late in the year, and he would have to gnaw a raw beetroot which he might pick up in a field as he had ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... Raimundo: all monks and friars, proceeding, that is to say, from the monastic orders." "These," he added, "are the orange-trees of heaven, whose fruits are placed on the table of God." Of evil-speakers Rodaja said, that they were like the feathers of the eagle which gnaw, wear away, and reduce to nothing, whatever feathers of other birds are mingled with them in beds or cushions, how good soever ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... nose is pointed, and his under jaw is shorter than the upper one. In front, on each jaw, he has two sharp teeth, shaped like the edge of a chisel, and these he uses to gnaw with. ...
— Friends in Feathers and Fur, and Other Neighbors - For Young Folks • James Johonnot
... the slowness of time, at the interminable minutes, began to gnaw him with its intolerable fever. What should he do until he could go to the club for dinner, since he could not work at home? The thought of the streets tired him only to think of, filled him with disgust for the sidewalks, ...
— Strong as Death • Guy de Maupassant
... vicious. He had lived in the white "settlements," and knew something. He was fastened by a long hide lariat to a peg driven into the ground, as were all the others, and he knew that the best place to gnaw in two that lariat was close to the peg, where he could get a good pull upon it. As soon as he had freed himself he tried the lariat of another mule, and found that the peg had been driven into loose earth and came right up. That was a scientific discovery, and he tried several other pegs. Some ...
— Two Arrows - A Story of Red and White • William O. Stoddard
... and a sailor, A tinker and a tailor, Had once a doubtful strife, sir, To make a maid a wife, sir, Whose name was buxom Joan. For now the time was ended, When she no more intended To lick her lips at men, sir, And gnaw the sheets in vain, sir, And ...
— Love for Love • William Congreve
... massive walls of the Romans, if the noble and pathetic architecture of the Middle Ages, had not been ground to dust by mere human rage. You talk of the scythe of time and the tooth of time; I tell you time is scytheless and toothless; it is we who gnaw like the worm, we who smite like the scythe. All these lost treasures of human intellect have been wholly destroyed by human industry of destruction; the marble would have stood its 2,000 years as well in the polished statue as in the Parian cliff; but we men have ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... partnership that shall finally monopolize the whole business of quenching thirst. Blessed consummation! Then Poverty shall pass away from the land, finding no hovel so wretched where her squalid form may shelter itself. Then Disease, for lack of other victims, shall gnaw his own heart and die. Then Sin, if she do not die, shall lose ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... A creeping, coloured caterpillar, I gnaw the fresh green hawthorn spray, I nibble it ...
— Fairies and Fusiliers • Robert Graves
... me refuse, "Certain I'll ne'er return. Two deaths enjoy."— The bloodless shadows wept as thus he sung, And struck the strings in concord with his words. Nor Tantalus at flying waters caught; Nor roll'd Ixion's wheel: the liver gnaw'd The birds not: rested on their empty urns The Belides: and Sisyphus, thou sat'st Upon thy stone. Nay fame declares, then first, Vanquish'd by song, the furies felt their cheeks Wetted with tears. Nor could the royal spouse, Nor he who rules deep darkness, him withstand ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... rose on his hind feet, standing higher than a man, and savagely raked the door from top to bottom with his claws while another opened his jaws wide and closed them, his teeth splintering across the smooth surface as he sought to gnaw his way inside. The remaining three circled the cabin, sniffing explosively at the cracks between the logs. Shady was seized with a fit of excessive shivering induced by these dread sounds, and Collins heard her hind leg-joints beating a spasmodic tattoo on the cabin floor. Then ...
— The Yellow Horde • Hal G. Evarts
... to Ambition's sway, I sought for glory in the paths of guile; And fawn'd and smiled, to plunder and betray, Myself betray'd and plunder'd all the while; So gnaw'd the viper the corroding file; But now with pangs of keen remorse, I rue Those years of trouble and debasement vile. Yet why should I this cruel theme pursue? Fly, fly, detested thoughts, ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... my heart till it is hard and burning like a thunderbolt! You can go back to your work and your glory, but what is left for me? Memory is a bed of thorns, and secret shame will gnaw at the roots of my life. You came like a wayfarer, sat through the sunny hours in the shade of my garden, and to while time away you plucked all its flowers and wove them into a chain. And now, parting, you snap the thread and let the flowers drop on the dust! ...
— The Fugitive • Rabindranath Tagore
... wits by which he had lived, bade the Capuchin hold up his wrists. Then he went nosing like a dog, until at last he found them, and his strong teeth fastened upon the cord that bound them, and began with infinite patience to gnaw it through. ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... pertained to Sheikh Hamed; as he was not a rich man, he laboured hard to make the most of every shukka and doti expended, and each fresh expenditure seemed to gnaw his very vitals: he was ready to weep, as he himself expressed it, at the high prices of Ugogo, and the extortionate demands of its sultans. For this reason, being the leader of the caravans, so far as he was able we were very sure not to be delayed in ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... twinkle from awakening farm-houses. The moon paled and a whiter light began to steal over the icy fields. Here was the place where he and the old mare had seen for the first time a railroad train. Hunger began to gnaw within him when he saw the smoke rising from a negro cabin down a little lane, and he left the road and moved toward it. At the bars which let into a little barnyard an old negro was milking a cow, and when, at the boy's low cry ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... Bines reports from over Kettle Creek way that the sagebrush whiskey they take a man's two bits for there would gnaw holes in limestone. Peter is likelier to find a ledge of dollar bills than he is good whiskey this far off the main trail. The late Daniel J. could have told him as much, and Daniel J.'s boy, who accompanies Uncle Peter, ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... road, over which we had to lead the horses, and haul the carriage separately. At this place we supplicated our agitator for leave to eat a little breakfast; but he would not stop an instant, and we were obliged to snatch up a roll or two apiece and gnaw the dry crusts during our passage to keep soul and body together. We got in soon after one, and I have spent my time in eating, drinking, sleeping, and other recreations, down to the ...
— A Hundred Years by Post - A Jubilee Retrospect • J. Wilson Hyde
... Again are folded round the child she loved And lost. Old sorrows are forgotten now, Or but remembered to make sweet the hour That overpays them; wounded hearts that bled Or broke are healed forever. In the room Of this grief-shadowed present, there shall be A Present in whose reign no grief shall gnaw The heart, and never shall a tender tie Be broken; in whose reign the eternal Change That waits on growth and action shall proceed With ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... least, he is free to profess the truth he had found, and to be one of the instances—very rare indeed they are—of a consistent and steady Protestant, who had for years before been thoroughly imbued with those doctrines which gnaw at the very vitals of mental perception, and obliterate the sense of fairness, and which very seldom leave enough alive in the mind to hold even real ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... apparently watching the brilliant sparks that ever and anon flew up the chimney. But ere long it scented the well-flavoured viand that dangled in the vicinity, and after casting a glance at the face of Joe, and being satisfied that he was insensible to all external objects, stealthily began to gnaw the end of the bone that rested on the hearth. As long as it had in mind the fear of interruption, it was permitted to feast moderately; but when its ravenous propensity urged it to more active and vigorous operations, Joe once more opened his eyes, and after looking slowly ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... a dog that gnaws his bone, I couch and gnaw it all alone— A time will come, which is not yet, When I'll bite him by whom ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... enough of that kind. You must now show that you've that other kind of pluck. You know the story of the boy who would not cry though the wolf was gnawing him underneath his frock. Most of us have some wolf to gnaw us somewhere; but we are generally gnawed beneath our clothes, so that the world doesn't see; and it behoves us so to bear it that the world shall not suspect. The man who goes about declaring himself to be miserable will be not only ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... past is the past, as Wordsworth probably said to Coleridge more than once. It was time for Lord Blight to forget these incidents of his eager and impetuous youth. Yet somehow he could not. Within the last few days his conscience had begun to gnaw him, and in his despair he told himself that at last the day of reckoning had come. Poor Blight! It is difficult to withhold ...
— The Sunny Side • A. A. Milne
... whispers, hisses, shrieks Madness in my ears. I bow my head and find a moment's relief from the anguish of soul in the hot scalding tears which stream down my fevered cheeks. O God of sure mercy, save other young men from the dark and desolate tortures which gnaw at my heart, and press down upon my weary soul! They are all, all, all the work of alcohol. Oh, how true it is—how true few can understand until their lives are a burden of distress and agony to them—that the cup which inebriates stingeth like an adder. When ...
— Fifteen Years in Hell • Luther Benson
... animal ceased for any length of time to wear them down by eating. It is for this reason that rats and mice have such incessant appetites, and that with them "all is fish that comes to the net;" old books, rags, and even planks of wood, which they will gnaw for want of something better. Come what may, they must keep up at an equal rate the wear and tear of the incisors, and the internal growth of the pulp beneath, which is always pushing the tooth forward. ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... the edge of the divan, hugging the dressing-gown round him, scowled vindictively at nothing and began thoughtfully to gnaw a ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... declared to Apollo, and Apollo told even to me. You are sailing to Italy, and you shall reach Italy and enter its harbors. But you are not destined to surround your city with a wall, till cruel hunger and vengeance for the wrong you have done us force you to gnaw your very ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... piece of wickedness. He employs for two years all his science as cheat, forger, and poisoner in extending the net which was to entangle a whole family; and, taken in his own snare, he struggles in vain; in vain does he seek to gnaw through the meshes which confine him. The foot placed on the last rung of this ladder of crime, stands also on the first step by which he ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - DERUES • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... not go into it. While it was doing this I heard the sound of a man somewhere in the wood. So did the fox, and oh! it looked so frightened. It lay down panting, its tongue hanging out and its ears pressed back against its head, and whisked its big tail from side to side. Then it began to gnaw again, but this time at its own leg. It wanted to bite it off and so get away. I thought this very brave of the fox, and though I hated it because it had eaten my brother and tried to eat me, I ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard
... hardly comprehend it, Do not comprehend the reason, How thou, Hiisi, here hast wandered, Why thou cam'st, thou evil creature, 170 Thus to bite, and thus to torture, Thus to eat, and thus to gnaw me. Art thou some disease-created Death that Jumala ordains me, Or art thou another creature, Fashioned and unloosed by others, Hired beforehand to torment me, Or hast thou ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... was deserted. The smouldering fires died out with the rising sun, and the silent life of the forest replaced the chatter and the hum of human kind. Giant beetles came from every quarter and carried away pieces of offal; small shy beasts stole out to gnaw the white bones upon which savage teeth had left but little; a gaunt hyena, with suspicious looks, snatched at a bone and dashed back into the jungle. Vultures settled down heavily, and with deliberate air sought out the ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham
... eke of mice, Of flies and bed-bugs, frogs and lice, Summons thee hither to the door-sill, To gnaw it where, with just a morsel Of oil, he paints the spot for thee:— There com'st thou, hopping on to me! To work, at once! The point which made me craven Is forward, on the ledge, engraven. Another ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... you,' continued Brother Archangias. 'I discovered this hole.... You have disobeyed God, and have slain your own peace. Henceforward, for ever, temptation will gnaw you with its fiery tooth, and you will no longer have ignorance of evil to help you to fight it. It was that creature who tempted you to your fall, was it not? Do you not see the serpent's tail writhing amongst ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... so," he said at last, quietly. "The worn old heart can gnaw on itself a little longer. I have no mind ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... bethinks him of a solution for this problem. The broken blade will do to gnaw off this bough, and it will serve to make a split in the end of it. And if one be fortunate, and if this split bestride the tail of the concealed animal, and if the stick ...
— The Singing Mouse Stories • Emerson Hough
... and greedily swallow whatever was offered. When he realised the sad truth that a huge hook with a strong barb was hidden inside this tempting dish and that it was no easy matter to disgorge the tasty morsel, he would try to gnaw through the shaft of the hook with his teeth. Very occasionally he might succeed, but usually his efforts failed. Attached to the book was a length of strong iron chain; and sometimes, though defeated by the hook, he would manage to snip through ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... heed to the firing of a gun, but became alert at the cracking of a nut; sometimes grew wildly angry; all his powers were then enlarged; was delighted with hills and woods, and always tried to escape after being taken to them; when angry would gnaw clothing and hurl furniture about; feared to look from a height, and Itard cured him of spasms of rage by holding his head out of a window; met all efforts to teach him with apathy, and ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... or wood, with the edges round and smooth, and care should be taken to keep it sweet and clean. At this period a moderate looseness, and a copious flow of saliva, are favourable symptoms. With a view to promote the latter, the child should be suffered to gnaw such substances as tend to mollify the gums, and by their pressure to facilitate the appearance of the teeth. A piece of liquorice or marshmallow root will be serviceable, or the gums may be softened and relaxed by rubbing them with ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... poor Folks may eat Cockles or Frogs, or may gnaw upon Onions or Leeks. The middle Sort of People will make some Abatement in their usual Provision; and though the Rich do make it an Occasion of living deliciously, they ought to impute that to their Gluttony, and not blame the ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... a little further, and she met a rat. So she said, "Rat! rat! gnaw rope; rope won't hang butcher; butcher won't kill ox; ox won't drink water; water won't quench fire; fire won't burn stick; stick won't beat dog; dog won't bite pig; pig won't get over the stile; and I shan't get home till midnight." But the ...
— English Fairy Tales • Flora Annie Steel
... Uncle Toby. "It's for Skyrocket. I want to get him a nice bone to gnaw. It will keep him quiet on the ride," he explained. "I'm going to get a fine, juicy bone ...
— The Curlytops and Their Playmates - or Jolly Times Through the Holidays • Howard R. Garis
... beastly expensive—but whenever I have I simply bite bits off it as I happen to want them. But I know that's not polite. If you prefer it, Cousin Frank, you can gouge out a chunk or two with your knife before I gnaw it." ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... to the cage, Skirrl began to gnaw at the boxes, trying with all his might to tear them to pieces. After some thirty minutes of such effort, interrupted by wanderings about the cage and attempts to get at the other monkeys, he suddenly ...
— The Mental Life of Monkeys and Apes - A Study of Ideational Behavior • Robert M. Yerkes
... not where it leads. And sometimes it leads to the desert, and the tongue swells out of the mouth, And you stagger blind to the mirage, to die in the mocking drouth. And sometimes it leads to the mountain, to the light of the lone camp-fire, And you gnaw your belt in the anguish of hunger-goaded desire. And sometimes it leads to the Southland, to the swamp where the orchid glows, And you rave to your grave with the fever, and they rob the corpse for its clothes. And sometimes ...
— The Spell of the Yukon • Robert Service
... eat bread of fir-bark; in our own fields the mouse, if pressed for food in winter, will gnaw the bark of sapling trees. Frost sharpens the teeth like a file, and hunger is keener than frost. If any one used to more fertile scenes had walked across the barren meads Mr. Roberts rented as the summer declined, he would have said that a living could ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... been occupied. His Grand Vizier, Safikuli Khan, is advancing with a large army against the son of Kueprili, and the darkness of defeat threatens to obscure the sun-like radiance of the Ottoman arms. Most puissant Padishah! suffer not the tooth of disaster to gnaw away at thy glory! The Grand Vizier and I have already gathered together thy host on the shores of the Bosphorus. They are ready, at a moment's notice, to embark in the ships prepared for them. Money and provisions in abundance have been sent to the frontier ...
— Halil the Pedlar - A Tale of Old Stambul • Mr Jkai
... declared that he was not hungry. He went to the window and, pulling back the curtain, stared out into the night. Was all the rest of life going to be like this? Was that restless, nervous, intolerable pain going to gnaw at his ...
— Sandy • Alice Hegan Rice
... a dead pig or sheep; it was the cobbler's turn, and he had it, cut it up, and salted it down. But when in course of time he came to partake of his side of bacon, behold it was so tough and dried up that even he could not gnaw it. The side hung in the cottage for months, for he did not like to throw it away, and could not think what to do with it, for the dogs could not eat it. At last the old fellow hit upon the notion of using it as leather to mend shoes; ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies
... at his love for my mother; speaking of himself throughout as Rene might, as of her humble devoted servant merely. And then the question began to gnaw at me. "Did she love him?" and somehow, I felt as if I could not rest till I knew; and I had it on my lips twenty times to cry out to him: "I know you loved her: oh! tell me, did she love you?" And yet I dared no more have done so, ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... were vitiated by foreign influence, permitted the bones of game slain in the chase to be broken, or left carelessly about the encampment. They were collected in heaps, or thrown into the water. Mrs. Eastman observes that even yet the Dakotas deem it an omen of ill luck in the hunt, if the dogs gnaw the bones or a woman inadvertently steps over them; and the Chipeway interpreter, John Tanner, speaks of the same fear among that tribe. The Yurucares of Bolivia carried it to such an inconvenient ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... not immoderate in their grief. The deception might have been deeper, and the loss more alarming and great. And then what was their grief at that hour, compared with the misery that must gnaw at the hearts of the deceivers, as inseparable from their guilt. What gift in the wide world would tempt them to exchange places with the wretched creatures? What a thorny road of perdition must their way of ...
— Summerfield - or, Life on a Farm • Day Kellogg Lee
... to a distance. I profit by the occasion and take hold of the grub. The legs of this third segment only are paralysed; the others retain their usual mobility. However helpless in the two injured legs, the animal can walk very well; it buries itself in the earth, returning to the surface at night to gnaw the stump of lettuce with which I have served it. For a fortnight my paralytic retains perfect liberty of action, except in the segment operated on; then it dies, not of its wound but accidentally. ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... what had happened, his wonder as to what would come next, and the hunger that had begun to gnaw at him, Clare could not sleep. And as he lay awake, thoughts ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... restored him for a short time to reason, and he would crawl up the bank and gnaw a morsel of the maple sugar; but he could not eat much, for it was in a tough, compact cake, which his jaws had not power to break. All that day and the next night he lay on the banks of the salt stream, or rushed wildly over the plain. It was about noon of the second day after ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... of him began to gnaw at my heart ... I dreamed still of what I would do when I had grown to be a man ... but now it was not any more to be a great traveller or explorer, but to grow into a strong man and kill my uncle, first putting him to some savage form of torture ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... dusky, silent street, paved with cobble-stones, I became aware that it was not mere gratitude which was guiding my steps towards the house with the old garden, where for years no guest other than myself had ever dined. Mere gratitude does not gnaw at one's interior economy in that particular way. Hunger might; but I was not feeling particularly hungry ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... Rev. J. Hinton Knowles' Folk-Tales of Kashmir a merchant gives his stupid son a small coin with which he is to purchase something to eat, something to drink, something to gnaw, something to sow in the garden, and some food for the cow. A clever young girl advises him to buy a water-melon, which would answer ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... eat since the evening before; and pangs of hunger began to gnaw him. He walked a short way toward a large, grey rock near which he heard a gurgling sound; and as he advanced he saw that a little stream of water gushed from beneath the base. He drank copiously of the pure, cold spring, and bathed his temples; but in carrying the ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins
... not how he will eat out his heart, while his friends gnaw their thick fists for that they are deprived of the battle? So are you ...
— Cyrano de Bergerac • Edmond Rostand
... to me, the only thing to be done. But I had the courage to hold my tongue, to gnaw at my entrails like the Spartan boy. I wished to leave ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... young Potentate o'Wales, I tell your highness fairly, Down Pleasure's stream, wi' swelling sails, I'm tauld ye're driving rarely; But some day ye may gnaw your nails, An' curse your folly sairly, That e'er ye brak Diana's pales, Or rattl'd dice wi' Charlie By ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... and wife are mated well, In harmony together dwell, Are faithful to each other, The streams of bliss flow constantly What bliss of angels is on high From hence may we discover; No storm, No worm Can destroy it, Can e'er gnaw it, What God giveth To the pair that ...
— Paul Gerhardt's Spiritual Songs - Translated by John Kelly • Paul Gerhardt
... our outward sufferings (though These were enough to gnaw into our souls) Hath stung me oft, and, more than ever, now. When, but for this untoward sickness, which Seized me upon this desolate frontier, and 50 Hath wasted, not alone my strength, but means, And leaves us—no! this is beyond me!—but For this I had been ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... full length beside a spring among the mountains, where he and his friends often camped to eat their dinner during their hunting expeditions. Roderick stood close by, lazily cropping the grass, but Marmion was not in sight. The last time his master saw him, he was trying to gnaw his way into a hollow log where a ...
— Frank Among The Rancheros • Harry Castlemon
... amid the chips, now at noon-day prepared to fight till the sun went down, or life went out. The smaller red champion had fastened himself like a vice to his adversary's front, and through all the tumblings on that field never for an instant ceased to gnaw at one of his feelers near the root, having already caused the other to go by the board; while the stronger black one dashed him from side to side, and, as I saw on looking nearer, had already divested him of several of his members. They fought with more pertinacity than bull-dogs. ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... insist upon bringing in some sort of bone!" but I begged her to let him gnaw them inside because it was so cold. Having been granted this privilege, he settled himself at my back and I became absorbed in some specially nice arrows ...
— Indian Boyhood • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... on the top of a broad, flat rock. And sitting down right in the center of it, he began to gnaw at the chestnut. He was so busy and so interested in what he was doing that before he knew it the rock began to move. It moved so slowly that it was not until it started to climb a little hummock, and nearly tipped Frisky over on his back, that he ...
— The Tale of Frisky Squirrel • Arthur Scott Bailey
... better speed, the town will have fallen, or yielded, rescue or no rescue, and of rescue there is no hope at all. The devil fights for the English, who will soon be swarming over the Loire, and that King of Bourges of ours will have to flee, and gnaw horse's fodder, oats and barley, ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... grave of the living,[80] where they are shut up from the world and their friends; and the worms that gnaw upon them their own thoughts and the jaylor. A house of meagre looks and ill smells, for lice, drink, and tobacco are the compound. Pluto's court was expressed from this fancy; and the persons are much about the same parity that is there. You may ask, as Menippus in Lucian, which ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... peculiarity pertained to Sheikh Hamed; as he was not a rich man, he laboured hard to make the most of every shukka and doti expended, and each fresh expenditure seemed to gnaw his very vitals: he was ready to weep, as he himself expressed it, at the high prices of Ugogo, and the extortionate demands of its sultans. For this reason, being the leader of the caravans, so far as he was able ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... lord, and we regard it with what, I trust, is reverential pride. The Church of God is enduring, and the church's edifice should be firm and solid, and of material that the tooth of time will not gnaw," ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... soaked in rum and of rotten seal blubber, he would rush on the scent and greedily swallow whatever was offered. When he realised the sad truth that a huge hook with a strong barb was hidden inside this tempting dish and that it was no easy matter to disgorge the tasty morsel, he would try to gnaw through the shaft of the hook with his teeth. Very occasionally he might succeed, but usually his efforts failed. Attached to the book was a length of strong iron chain; and sometimes, though defeated by the hook, he would manage to ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... Nothing more so. Do you forget the angels who lost heaven for the daughters of men? Do you forget Helen, and the fair women who made mischief and set nations by the ears before Helen was born? If jealousies that gnaw men's hearts out of their bodies,—if pangs that waste men to shadows and drive them into raving madness or moping melancholy,—if assassination and suicide are dreadful possibilities, then there is always something frightful about a lovely young woman.—I love to look at this "Rainbow," as her ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... strait of sea, Crushed at the root of Etna's mountain-pile. High on the pinnacles whereof there sits Hephaestus, sweltering at the forge; and thence On some hereafter day shall burst and stream The lava-floods, that shall with ravening fangs Gnaw thy smooth lowlands, fertile Sicily! Such ire shall Typho from his living grave Send seething up, such jets of fiery surge, Hot and unslaked, altho' himself be laid In quaking ashes by Zeus' thunderbolt. But thou dost know hereof, nor needest me To school thy sense: thou knowest safety's road— ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus
... was more or less at home there. At any rate Elmer was pleased to see him sit up on his haunches and begin to gnaw at a stray nut he ...
— Pathfinder - or, The Missing Tenderfoot • Alan Douglas
... strangled up in the air, as leopards are in Abyssinia. A noose may be set in any place where there is a run; it can be kept spread out, by thin rushes or twigs set crosswise in it. If the animal it is set for can gnaw, a heavy stone should be loosely propped up, which the animal in its struggles may set free, and by the weight of which it may be hung up and strangled. It is a very convenient plan for a traveller who has not time to look for runs, to make ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... creeped along. He swallowed up one of my comrades, notwithstanding his loud cries, and the efforts he made to rid himself of the serpent; which, shaking him several times against the ground, crushed him, and we could hear him gnaw and tear the poor wretch's bones, when we had fled at a great distance from him. Next day we saw the serpent again, to our great terror, when I cried out, O Heaven, to what dangers are we exposed! We rejoiced yesterday at our having escaped from the cruelty of a giant, ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous
... alight in the center; anyway, no harm could result if they did, cross-fertilization having been presumably accomplished. While beetles (especially Donacia) are ever abundant visitors, it is likely they do much more harm than good. So eagerly do they gnaw both petals and stamens, which look like loops of narrow yellow ribbon within the bowl of an older flower, that, although they must carry some pollen to younger flowers as they travel on, it is probable they destroy ten times more than their share. Flies transport pollen too. The smaller bees ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... people's romances. It is told of it that it will discover hidden stores, and, digging them up out of the snow, carefully smooth the surface over again; that it will avoid every trap set for itself, and, going round to the back of spring guns, gnaw through the string connected with the trigger before it drags away the bait. It follows up the lines laid down by the trappers, taking the martens out, and devouring them, or hiding what it cannot eat, and by wearying out ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... there was a buzz of conversation going on—there always is; but at last, when the Rev. Mr. Burgess rose and laid his hand on the sack, he could hear his microbes gnaw, the place was so still. He related the curious history of the sack, then went on to speak in warm terms of Hadleyburg's old and well-earned reputation for spotless honesty, and of the town's just pride in this reputation. He said that this reputation was a treasure of priceless ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... had bestowed upon him. I now became the rival—the successful rival—of the rustling autumn leaves. At my instigation his mother freed him from his equipage and a little anxiously yet resolutely laid him in my arms. I dandled him, I chirruped to him, I hummed to him, I encouraged him to gnaw my watch and to claw my mustache, and presently I began to toss him up in my hands ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... Governor shall know all to-morrow, and his Highness the Stadtholder the day after. We know the law,—we shall give a second edition of the Buytenhof, Master Scholar, and a good one this time. Yes, yes, just gnaw your paws like a bear in his cage, and you, my fine little lady, devour your dear Cornelius with your eyes. I tell you, my lambkins, you shall not much longer have the felicity of conspiring together. Away with you, unnatural daughter! And as to you, Master ...
— The Black Tulip • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... all this goodly earth Was but to me one wild waste wilderness; I had no share in Nature's patrimony, Blasted were all my morning hopes of Youth, Dark DISAPPOINTMENT follow'd on my ways, CARE was my bosom inmate, and keen WANT Gnaw'd at my heart. ETERNAL ONE thou know'st How that poor heart even in the bitter hour Of lewdest revelry has ...
— Poems • Robert Southey
... "Much gladness!" she cried aloud before she saw his burden; "tempered only by a regret that you did not abandon your chase at an earlier hour. Fear not for the present that the wolf-tusk of famine shall gnaw our repose or that the dreaded wings of the white and scaly one shall hover about our house-top. Your wealthy cousin, journeying back to the Capital from the land of the spice forests, has been here in your absence, leaving you gifts of fur, silk, carved ivory, oil, wine, nuts and rice ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... it was, boys. You got fooled, now, didn't you? You let 'em use you like old Samson used the foxes. Now, the next time one of those disturber fellows ties a blazing pine knot to your tail, you sit right down and gnaw the string in two before you start to run. Because a man holds office it's no sign he's a renegade. You'll usually find the renegades standing outside and slandering him and trying to get his office away for their own use. They got you going, didn't they, when they went around telling that I ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... finally monopolize the whole business of quenching thirst. Blessed consummation! Then Poverty shall pass away from the land, finding no hovel so wretched, where her squalid form may shelter itself. Then Disease, for lack of other victims, shall gnaw its own heart, and die. Then Sin, if she do not die, shall lose half her strength. Until now, the frenzy of hereditary fever has raged in the human blood, transmitted from sire to son, and rekindled in every generation, by fresh draughts of ...
— A Rill From the Town Pump (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... gone on, I had been ruined: But by good Fortune, with her third, which was Peggy, the Height of her Imagination came down to the Corner of a Venison Pasty, and brought her once even upon her Knees to gnaw off the Ears of a Pig from the Spit. The Gratifications of her Palate were easily preferred to those of her Vanity; and sometimes a Partridge or a Quail, a Wheat-Ear or the Pestle of a Lark, were chearfully purchased; nay, I could be contented tho I were to feed ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... asleep, an' I'll tell you all about it. Stray lamb! I should say as much! A little white corset-lamb, used to eat out o' your hand, with a blue ribbon round its neck. Goin' to be sent out to her death—or worse, by a sharp-fangled wolf of a boardin'-house keeper, who'd gnaw the skin off'n your bones, an' then crack the bones to get at the marrer, if you give her the chanct. I'll tell you all about it ...
— Martha By-the-Day • Julie M. Lippmann
... terms call up pictures. If we say "Honesty is the best policy," we speak abstractly. Nobody can see or hear or touch the thing honesty or the thing policy; the apprehension of them must be purely intellectual. But if we say "The rat began to gnaw the rope," we speak concretely. Rat, gnaw, and rope are tangible, perceptible things; the words bring to us visions of ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... immersions usually restored him for a short time to reason, and he would crawl up the bank and gnaw a morsel of the maple sugar; but he could not eat much, for it was in a tough, compact cake, which his jaws had not power to break. All that day and the next night he lay on the banks of the salt stream, or ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... with blowing continual hunger in them? The Senses have overcharged their stomachs already, and you, sirrah, serve them up a fresh appetite with every new dish. They had burst their guts if thou hadst stayed but a thought longer. Begone, or I'll set thee away; begone, ye gnaw-bone, raw-bone ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... upon thy breast this flask of poison, that where the sword cannot reach, it may gnaw, corrode, and burn ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... they stayed there they might, perhaps, get supplies of provisions with tolerable regularity. "But if you're over the water, my lad," said the old fellow with the can, picking his teeth with a twig, "and have got to get your victuals by ship; by George, you may have to eat grass, or gnaw ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... Major, then from Bruce. They, too, had seen. It was too late now, for their landing wheels were almost touching the surface as they glided on. And now, strangely enough, some of the gray streaks began to chase the plane. As if imagining it a bird with flesh to eat and bones to gnaw, they came on. Then, all at once, Barney realized what they followed—the scent of fresh meat. Timmie had killed a reindeer in honor of their departure and had presented them with a hind-quarter. This was now roped on the ...
— Lost In The Air • Roy J. Snell
... pot, but the soup he forgot; Not a meal did his lordship allow, Unless we gnaw'd o'er the blade-bone of the boar, Or the rib of ...
— Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare • Walter Savage Landor
... the Nationalists in the House of Commons added to the difficulties of the Government, as Mr. Bonar Law had complained in March. It was to placate them that the Convention had been summoned. It was a bone thrown to a snarling dog, and the longer there was anything to gnaw the longer would the dog keep quiet. The Ulster delegates understood this perfectly, and, as their chief desire was to help the Government to get on with the war, they had no wish to curtail the proceedings of the Convention, although they were never under the delusion that ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill
... commoner sort, At Whitehall and Westminster he stood guard, Reading men's faces with most anxious eye. There the lords swarmed, some waspish and some bland, But none would pause at plucking of the sleeve To hearken to him, and the lad had died On London stones for lack of crust to gnaw But that he caught the age's malady, The something magical that was in air, And made men poets, heroes, demi-gods— Made Shakespeare, Rawleigh, Grenvile, Oxenham, And set them stars in the fore-front of Time. In fine, young Darrell drew ...
— Wyndham Towers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... He picked up a stick from the roadside and commenced to gnaw it; then, surprised because the others were not eating, he broke the stick in three parts, and said: "Do have some of the nice tender steak, Mr. Burns and Mr. Wilson." They threw the sticks at him. He ran ahead of them. They finished the bombardment with hunks of mud, and chased after him, ...
— Tom of the Raiders • Austin Bishop
... said a Netherlander who was intensely loyal to the king and a most uncompromising Catholic, "eaten up and abandoned for that purpose to the arbitrary will of foreigners who suck the substance and marrow of the land without benefit to the king, gnaw the obedient cities to the bones, and plunder the open defenceless country at their pleasure, it may be imagined how much satisfaction these provinces take in their condition. Commerce and trade have ceased in a country which traffic alone has peopled, for without it no human habitation could be ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... another vision saw, In France, at Aix, in his Chapelle once more, That his right arm an evil bear did gnaw; Out of Ardennes he saw a leopard stalk, His body dear did savagely assault; But then there dashed a harrier from the hall, Leaping in the air he sped to Charles call, First the right ear of that grim bear he caught, And furiously the leopard ...
— The Song of Roland • Anonymous
... rascal! he beats all the rest—ha, ha! he is a superior wretch—he commands the tribe, and will venture the first into the trap. How will he bite against the steel, the fine fellow! while all the ignobler herd will gaze at him afar off, and quake and fear, and never help. Yet if united, they might gnaw the trap and release their leader! Ah, ye are base vermin, ye eat my bread, yet if death came upon me, ye would riot on my carcass. Away!" and clapping his hands, the chain round him clanked harshly, and the noisome co-mates of his dungeon vanished ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... pseudo-sciences, phrenology and the rest, seem to me only appeals to weak minds and the weak points of strong ones. There is a pica or false appetite in many intelligences; they take to odd fancies in place of wholesome truth, as girls gnaw at chalk and charcoal. Phrenology juggles with nature. It is so adjusted as to soak up all evidence that helps it, and shed all that harms it. It crawls forward in all weathers, like Richard Edgeworth's hygrometer. It does not stand at the boundary of our ignorance, it seems ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... live in the swamps, and gnaw the bark from trees. I an't afraid of snakes! I'd rather have one near me than him," ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... replied Fink; "that is all very well; but we did not want a whole clan of women and children into the bargain; the castle is as full as a bee-hive—more than sixty mouths; to say nothing of a dozen horses; spite of your potato-carts, we shall have to gnaw the stones before twenty-four hours ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... it oft, but now I feel a wonder, In what grievous pain they die, that die for hunger. O my greedy stomach, how it doth bite and gnaw? If I were at a rack, I could eat hay or straw. Mine empty guts do fret, my maw doth even tear, Would God I had a piece of some horsebread here. Yet is master Esau in worse case than I. If he have not some meat, the sooner he will die: He hath sunk for faintness twice or thrice by the way, And ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Robert Dodsley
... during his frequent attacks of anger it grew dark and purple. His nails were bitten to the quick, for while some trembling boy was construing he would sit at his desk shaking with the fury that consumed him, and gnaw his fingers. Stories, perhaps exaggerated, were told of his violence, and two years before there had been some excitement in the school when it was heard that one father was threatening a prosecution: he had boxed the ears of a boy named Walters with ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... drank only a mouthful of wine, and nevertheless saw death daily drawing nearer. Whilst he thus gazed before him, he saw a snake creep out of a corner of the vault and approach the dead body. And as he thought it came to gnaw at it, he drew his sword and said, "As long as I live, thou shalt not touch her," and hewed the snake in three pieces. After a time a second snake crept out of the hole, and when it saw the other lying dead and cut in pieces, it went back, but soon came again with ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... heard these rumors, and her life was embittered by their terrible import. A pall of gloom shrouded her sky, and anguish began to gnaw at her heart amidst all the splendors of the Tuileries and the ...
— Hortense, Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... now for reflection; your fate is in my hands. Would you rather pine away the remainder of your days in the deepest of my dungeons, where hunger shall compel you to gnaw your own bones, and burning thirst make you suck your own blood? Or would you rather eat your bread in peace, and have rest in ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... that. They must have wandered around for at least a day and a half, and in all that while they had not a drop of water, and not a thing to eat. Wait, though, at last in their desperation they did gnaw the tallow candles, and that served to keep them alive, and, in a measure, alleviate their awful ...
— Tom Swift and his Air Glider - or, Seeking the Platinum Treasure • Victor Appleton
... said at last, quietly. "The worn old heart can gnaw on itself a little longer. I have no ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... or not she had been thinking. It seemed essential to Anthony that she should muse aloud upon last night's disaster. Her silence was a method of settling the responsibility on him. For her part she saw no necessity for speech—the moment required that she should gnaw at her finger ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... men eat bread of fir-bark; in our own fields the mouse, if pressed for food in winter, will gnaw the bark of sapling trees. Frost sharpens the teeth like a file, and hunger is keener than frost. If any one used to more fertile scenes had walked across the barren meads Mr. Roberts rented as the summer ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... properly constructed novel he would have been left in a position which would have enabled him to gnaw the hide with his strong white teeth, or rub it until it wore through ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... I wish you'd just look what a mess the rats have gone and made of this linen. They've been trying to gnaw the starch out of it, and have cut ...
— Westerfelt • Will N. Harben
... you may take my word for it that I shall make a fine meal of you before I think of parting with you." "Silly wretch!" said the File, as gruff as could be, "you had much better be quiet, and let me alone; for, if you gnaw for ever, you will get nothing but your trouble for your pains. Make a meal of me, indeed! why, I myself can bite the hardest iron in the shop; and if you go on with your foolish nibbling I shall tear all the ...
— Favourite Fables in Prose and Verse • Various
... years of this climate suffices to give as much or more antiquity of aspect, whether to gravestone or edifice, than a hundred years of our own,—so soon do lichens creep over the surface, so soon does it blacken, so soon do the edges lose their sharpness, so soon does Time gnaw away the records. The only really old monuments (and those not very old) were two, standing close together, and raised on low rude arches, the dates on which were 1684 and 1686. On one a cross was rudely cut into the stone. But there may have been hundreds older than this, ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... his mad circuit around the windfall. At his fourth or fifth heat the porcupine smoothed itself down a little, and continuing the interrupted thread of its chatter waddled to a near-by poplar, climbed it and began to gnaw the ...
— Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... protest of many, that is so irritating to the home-rule. True, it might be only the quiescence of despair, but at least she veiled it decently under a show of Spartan cheerfulness. The fox of bitterness might gnaw, but she drew the mantle of her pride closer round her. She might suffer and pine, like a caged lark in her narrow cage, but at least no one, not even Archie, and least of all her mother, should guess the extent of her sufferings. So there was peace in Lowder Street. ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... idea of. He knows how a roost of poultry looks at morning dusk, when, if you enter the barn, the entire roost turns one eye at you, and then for an unknown cause simultaneously shakes its head. He knows how hens catch mice in the hay-mow—how they gnaw the sucking pigs' tails to the bone (the hired man says they need the meat). He knows how to obtain bumblebees' honey, paying for this information with an ear like a garnet potato, one of the sort ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... whirl it on the floor, and eat it at their leisure as it got cold. In order to prevent this, the top of the boiler was secured by an iron rod passing under its handle of the boiler on each side; but not many days passed ere they discovered that they could gnaw the cords asunder, and displace the rod, and fish out the meat as before. Small chains were then substituted for the cords, and the meat was cooked in safety for nearly a week, when they found that, by rearing themselves on their hind legs, and applying their united strength ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... painful sensations those irregular desires, those disgusting propensities, by which he is perpetually agitated; seeing the terrible effect of those licentious passions which torment him; of those lasting inquietudes which gnaw his repose; of those stupendous evils, as well physical as moral, which assail him on every side: the contemplator of humanity would be tempted to believe that happiness was not made for this world; that any effort to cure those minds which every thing unites to poison, would be a vain enterprize; ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... and mark'd, and mix'd, and handed, In silent horror, and their distribution Lull'd even the savage hunger which demanded, Like the Promethean vulture, this pollution; None in particular had sought or plann'd it, 'T was nature gnaw'd them to this resolution, By which none were permitted to be neuter— And the lot fell ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... "He'll gnaw right through the house, he'll chew right through the roof. He'll get in. He has smelled that big ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... we did to lose our faithful old friends, and all the winter long we grieved, the kids and me. Every time the coyotes yelped we knew they were gathering to gnaw poor old Nick and Fan's bones. And pa, to keep from crying himself when the kids and me would be sobbin', would scold us. 'My goodness,' he would say, 'the horses are dead and they don't know nothin' about cold and hunger. They don't know nothin' about sore shoulders and hard pulls ...
— Letters on an Elk Hunt • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... by an equal ambition, all the occupants of the pea bore their way towards the delicious morsel. The journey is laborious, and the grubs must rest frequently in their provisional niches. They rest; while resting they frugally gnaw the riper tissues surrounding them; they gnaw rather to open a way ...
— A Book of Exposition • Homer Heath Nugent
... Don't say nothin' 'bout dem rabbits for dere warn't no end to 'em. Rabbits stewed, rabbits fried, and rabbits dried, smoked, and cured lak hog meat! I et so many rabbits when I was young I can't stand to look at 'em now but I could eat 'possums and gnaw de bones all day long. Marse Billy let grandpa go fishin' and he was all time bringin' back a passel of minnows and other fishes. Us rubbed 'em down wid lard and salt and pepper, den rolled 'em in cornmeal and baked 'em. I never seed no fried meat 'til I was a big ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume IV, Georgia Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... this garrison. We mixed the handful of flour given to us with snow water, and, wrapping the unsalted dough around a sagebrush spike, we cooked it in the flames, and ate it from the stick, as a dog would gnaw a bone. The officers put a guard around the few little hackberry trees to keep the men from eating the berries and the bark. Not a scrap of the few buffalo we found was wasted. Even the entrails cleansed in the snow and ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... so long and valiantly. It was the verdant spring-tide, but the fresh green foliage had no charms for the heart-broken and starving men, whose food supplies had grown so low that they were forced to gnaw the young shoots of the trees for sustenance. It is not our purpose here to tell what followed the surrounding of the fragment of an army by an overwhelming force of foes, the surrender and parole, and the dispersion of the veteran troops ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... up the trail," he said. "Didn't see a thing but an ol' gnaw bucket. We'll jest eat a bite an' p'int off to the nor'west an' keep watch o' this 'ere trail. They's Injuns over thar on the slants. We got to know how they look an' 'bout ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... rodents, mice are apt to be busy and mischievous infesters of libraries. They are extremely fond of paste, and being in a chronic state of hunger, they watch opportunities of getting at any library receptacle of it. They will gnaw any fresh binding, whether of cloth, board, or leather, to get at the coveted food. They will also gnaw some books, and even pamphlets, without any apparent temptation of a succulent nature. A good library cat or a series ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... immediate purposes and machinery of our lives, is afforded us. We seem endowed with a more accurate knowledge of self; the inmost workings of our souls are abruptly revealed—feeling's mysteries stand developed—our weaknesses stare us in the face—and our vices appear to gnaw the very vitals of our hope. The veil was indeed withdrawn,—and Delme's heart acknowledged, that the fair being who leant on him for support, was dearer—far dearer, than all beside. But he saw too, ambition in that heart's ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... them eyes you ain't. Now that you're here, pay the coyotes and let 'em go off to gnaw ...
— Riders of the Silences • John Frederick
... long ago deserting the garden neighborhood, feed at eventide in flocks upon the bloody berries of the sumac; and the soft-eyed pigeons dispute possession of the feast. The squirrels chatter at sunrise, and gnaw off the full-grown burrs of the chestnuts. The lazy blackbirds skip after the loitering cow, watchful of the crickets that her slow steps start to danger. The crows in companies caw aloft, and hang high over the carcass of some slaughtered sheep ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... swoord red out of the fire, and plucked severall of my nailes. I stayed in that maner all night. I neither wanted in the meane while meate nor drinke. I was supplied by my mother and sisters. My father alsoe came to see me & tould me I should have courage. That very time there came a litle boy to gnaw with his teeth the end of my fingers. There appears a man to cutt off my thumb, and being about it leaves me instantly & did no harme, for which I was glad. I believe that my father dissuaded him ...
— Voyages of Peter Esprit Radisson • Peter Esprit Radisson
... against the stones, And now they pick the bishop's bones; They gnaw'd the flesh from every limb, For they were sent ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various
... at some of the green corn stalks, but he did not like the taste of them. Perhaps he had not yet learned to like them, for I have seen older pigs eat corn stalks. And pigs are very fond of the yellow corn itself. They love to gnaw it off the cob, and chew it, just as ...
— Squinty the Comical Pig - His Many Adventures • Richard Barnum
... know: whoever wants to fight, let him seize his sprinkling-brush; whoever prefers to die, let him call the priest—that's all! I want to live and fight! Of what use is the Bernardine? Are we schoolboys? What do I care for that Robak? Now we will all be Robaks, that is, worms, and proceed to gnaw at the Muscovites! Hem, haw! spies! to explore! Do you know what that means? Why, that you are impotent old beggars! Hey, brothers! It is a setter's work to follow a trail, a Bernardine's to ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... caught in a trap, will struggle till they escape, with the loss of a leg; a fox, which is carnivorous, will do more; he will gnaw off his own leg to escape. Do they die in consequence? no, they live and do well; but could a man live under such circumstances? impossible. If you don't believe me, gnaw your own leg off and try. And yet the conformation of the Mammalia is not very dissimilar from our own; but man is the more perfect creature, and therefore ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... or August, soon after the swarming season is over, the bees expel the drones from the hive. They sometimes sting them, and sometimes gnaw the roots of their wings, so that when driven from the hive, they cannot return. If not treated in either of these summary ways, they are so persecuted and starved, that they soon perish. The hatred of the bees extends even to the young which are still unhatched: they are mercilessly pulled ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... when he was surer these spider swarms could not drop into the ravine, he found a place where he could sit down, and sat and fell into deep thought and began, after his manner, to gnaw his knuckles and bite his nails. And from this he was moved by the coming of the man ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... silk-worms. The trays were filled with dead leaves, which the poor insects crawled over, vainly endeavouring to find a piece sufficiently moist to satisfy their craving appetite. From thence I went to the rabbits, and found them without victuals, and so hungry that they had begun to gnaw the belts of the hutches. I inquired for Emma, but was some time before I could discover where she was. At length I found her very busy in making a garden with her brother George, so much taken up with her new ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... bail me! But grief grows great, and now my trust doth fail me. Oh! that my conscience were but clear within, Which now is racked with my former sin; With horror I behold my secret stealing, My bribes, oppression, and my graceless dealing; My office-sins, which I had clean forgotten, Will gnaw my soul when all my bones are rotten: I must confess it, very grief doth force me, Dead or alive, both God and man doth curse me. LET ALL EXCISEMEN hereby warning take, To shun their practice ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell
... without Republicans: Socialist papers and Socialist leaders groveling before Royalties when they visited Paris: the souls of servants gaping at titles, and gold lace, and orders: they could be kept quiet by just having a bone to gnaw, or the Legion of Honor flung at them. If the Kings had ennobled all the citizens of France, all the citizens of France would ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... with his kisses, and she looked upon Othello, and she saw him gnaw his under lip, and roll his eyes, and she knew he was always fatal when he looked so: and he bade her prepare for death, and to say her prayers, for he would not kill her soul. And this innocent wife, as she lay at his mercy, begged for compassion, and to know ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... the shell at the one spot where the meat will be most exposed. Occasionally one makes a mistake, but not often. It stands them in hand to know, and they do know. Doubtless, if butternuts were a main source of my food, and I were compelled to gnaw into them, I should learn, too, on which side my bread ...
— Squirrels and Other Fur-Bearers • John Burroughs
... stroked the bow-bearer's hand, a condescension which made the footstool-bearer, parasol-bearer, quiver-bearer, and a dozen great lords more gnaw their lips with envy. Hydarnes, the commander who had waited an auspicious moment, now thought it safe to kneel on the ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... murmured Pierre wearily. "I get discouraged standing and hearing them gnaw those leaves. I know they are just making ...
— The Story of Silk • Sara Ware Bassett
... I'd better stay sitting down," thought Uncle Wiggily. "Perhaps some one may come along, and I can ask them go get Nurse Jane to gnaw for me another rheumatism crutch out of a corn-stalk. I'll wait ...
— Uncle Wiggily and Old Mother Hubbard - Adventures of the Rabbit Gentleman with the Mother Goose Characters • Howard R. Garis
... that in my plays abide Shall teach the lesson of equal justice; Nothing that's wrong can prosper on this earth, And though your crime-secret be hid in mounts Of adamant, kissing, loftiest sky, The worm of detection and exposure Shall gnaw its way through rugged, granite ribs And blow your foul wickedness around the world. Men, states and empires, rise and flash like bubbles On the rolling ocean of existence, And then like the false, shimmering vision Of a dream, pass into nameless oblivion. The ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... they fed him again with a large bone. Jonas said that he was undoubtedly a dog that had lost his master, and had been wandering about to find him, until he became very hungry. So he said they would leave him in the yard to gnaw his bone, and that then he would probably go away. Josey wanted to shut him up and keep him, but Jonas said it would ...
— Jonas on a Farm in Winter • Jacob Abbott
... by de right laig of de wrong rabbit. Den a man-eatin' mule come a-browsin' on me an' gnaw a suit of close right offen my back. Den I runs into a elephint in a fog an' busts one of Mist' Lee Farrell's taxiscabs fur him an' he busts my jaw fur me. Den I gits tuk advantage of by a fool lion dat can't chamber his licker ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... dying person kept complaining that they would not give him red-hot nuts to gnaw ... and only in the depths of his dimming eyes was there throbbing and palpitating something, like the wing of ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... Venters laughed, and suddenly caught himself with a quick breath and felt again the little shock. When had he laughed? "It's hunger," he went on. "I've had that gnaw many a time. I've got it now. But you mustn't eat. You can have all the water you want, ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... is old-fashioned and I shock her. As for other women, there isn't one anywhere to whom I would say a word. Only think how a girl such as I am is placed; or indeed any girl. You, if you see a woman that you fancy, can pursue her, can win her and triumph, or lose her and gnaw your heart;—at any rate you can do something. You can tell her that you love her; can tell her so again and again even though she should scorn you. You can set yourself about the business you have taken in hand and can work hard at it. What can a ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... sat down on the edge of the divan, hugging the dressing-gown round him, scowled vindictively at nothing and began thoughtfully to gnaw a bony knuckle. ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... full of suggestion of that spirit-life, with its larger struggles or its universal peace, which is above the world's crowd and noise. And she determines that sorrow for what is fleeting shall not gnaw at ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... and let it be choice," cried the robber. "I have well earned my day. Serve supper, Calabash; Martial shall gnaw our bones—good enough for him. Now let us talk of the customer, 'Quai de Billy,' for to-morrow or next day that must come off, if I wish to pocket the money he promised. I am going to tell ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... a great lump of raw something—was it a walrus, with that round head and big tusks?—and held it up to her; and when Lucy shook her head and said, "No, thank you," as civilly as she could, the woman tore it in two, and handed a lump over her shoulder to her baby, who began to gnaw it. Then her first friend, the little boy, hoping to please her better, offered her some drink. Ah! it was oil, just like the oil that was burning in the lamp!—horrid train-oil from the whales! She could not help shaking her head, so much that ...
— Little Lucy's Wonderful Globe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and Prue and Agatha Are thick with Mig and Joan! They bite their threads and shake their heads And gnaw my ...
— A Few Figs from Thistles • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... all the deep red heraldry befits A coward lust: the latter "A" in gules Upon thy sable heart. There let it gnaw Forever and forever! ...
— The Scarlet Stigma - A Drama in Four Acts • James Edgar Smith
... a beam and endeavouring to crawl up it; a third is actually on the roof and scatters the shrieking girls everywhere by his impudent addresses; another bursts from a room on the ground-floor holding ears of corn in each hand, and throwing himself upon the earth begins to gnaw them as a dog would a bone, while one of his companions leaps on him, and together they give a faithful representation of two prairie wolves fighting over carrion. The greatest uproar prevails all about; the Koshare are outdoing themselves; they scatter delirious joy, pleasure, delight, ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... the wreckage that is heaped along the shore Where the waters gnaw unceasing and endeavor sails ...
— Oklahoma Sunshine • Freeman E. (Freeman Edwin) Miller
... hide themselves under vine leaves, and gnaw covetously and fret the grapes of the vineyard, and namely when the keepers and wards be negligent and reckless, and it profiteth not that some unwise men do, that close within the vineyard hounds, that are adversaries to foxes. For few hounds, so closed, waste ...
— Mediaeval Lore from Bartholomew Anglicus • Robert Steele
... burned my lips. Could that boy read The tokens of an overwearied spirit, Strained past endurance, he had spared her still, At any cost of silence. What is such love To mine, that would outrival Roman heroes— Watch mine arm crisp and shrivel in quick flame, Or set a lynx to gnaw my heart away, To save her from a needle-prick of pain, Ay, or to please her? At their worth she rates Her wooers—light as all-embracing air Or universal sunshine. Luca, go And tell Fiametta—rather, bid the lass Hither herself. [Exit Luca.] He comes to pay me homage, ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... this and the stripped spindles lie by the score under the big pasture pines where these have left them after eating the seeds. It seems much work for small pay for the squirrel. He must climb venturesomely to the very tip of the slippery limb, gnaw the cone from its hold, then run down the tree and gnaw it to pieces for the tiny seeds within. So light are these seeds, wing and all, that it takes twenty to thirty thousand of them to weigh a pound and it is probably fortunate that squirrels do not live by pine ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... was set outside the door, and I was beginning to gnaw the lean limbs of the Normandy chicken, to drink the clear cider and to munch the hunk of white bread, which was four days ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... minutes afterwards the cry of one of her babes struck on her ear, and the next moment Ursel stood beside her, laying them down close to her, and saying exultingly, "Safe! safe out at the gate, and down the hillside, and my old lady ready to gnaw off her ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... perception of a guilty shadow falling on its bed, that troubled its innocent rest? Did no dog howl, and strive to break its rattling chain, that it might tear him; no burrowing rat, scenting the work he had in hand, essay to gnaw a passage after him, that it might hold a greedy revel at the feast of his providing? When he looked back, across his shoulder, was it to see if his quick footsteps still fell dry upon the dusty pavement, or were already moist and clogged with the red mire ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... fierce robbers come down from the mountains, and carry off the little children, and sell them to the Moors. The lions lie in wait for the caravans, and leap upon the camels. The wild boar roots up the corn in the valley, and the foxes gnaw the vines upon the hill. The pirates lay waste the sea-coast and burn the ships of the fishermen, and take their nets from them. In the salt-marshes live the lepers; they have houses of wattled reeds, and none ...
— Selected Prose of Oscar Wilde - with a Preface by Robert Ross • Oscar Wilde
... to the point of producing such monsters. I pity humanity, I wish it were good, because I cannot separate myself from it; because it is myself; because the evil it does strikes me to the heart; because its shame makes me blush; because its crimes gnaw at my vitals, because I cannot understand paradise in heaven nor on earth for ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... taken advantage of the preoccupation of his captors during the last moments of Theriere to gnaw in two the grass rope which bound him to the mucker, and with hands still fast bound behind him had slunk into the jungle path that led ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... wiping it with the hair of the head that he had spoiled behind: then he began, "Thou willest that I renew a desperate grief that oppresses my heart already only in thinking ere I speak of it. But, if my words are to be seed that may bear fruit of infamy for the traitor whom I gnaw, thou shalt see me speak and weep at once. I know not who thou art, nor by what mode thou art come down hither, but Florentine thou seemest to me truly when I hear thee. Thou hast to know that I was the Count Ugolino and he the Archbishop Ruggieri.[1] Now will I tell thee why I am such a neighbor. ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri
... brush. We saw many large trees which had been cut down by them. The stumps looked as though some boy had chopped them down with a dull axe. It is surprising to reflect upon the pertinacity of these creatures which enables them to gnaw down such immense trees, and the wisdom with which they calculate the direction in which ...
— Illustrated Science for Boys and Girls • Anonymous
... the southern plains were not often formidable to large animals, even in the days when they most abounded. They rarely attacked the horses of the hunter, and indeed were but little regarded by these experienced animals. They were much more likely to gnaw off the lariat with which the horse was tied, than to try to molest the steed himself. They preferred to prey on young animals, or on the weak and disabled. They rarely molested a full-grown cow or steer, still less a full-grown buffalo, and, if they did attack such an animal, ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... larger and fatter, and their fur is more abundant and of a darker colour than any we had hitherto seen: their favourite food seems to be the bark of the cottonwood and willow, as we have seen no other species of tree that has been touched by them, and these they gnaw to the ground through a diameter ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... march was discontinued. All day and all night the men kept in the tent, huddled in the sleeping-bags, sometimes sleeping eighteen and twenty hours out of the twenty-four. They lost all consciousness of the lapse of time; sensation even of suffering left them; the very hunger itself had ceased to gnaw. Only Bennett and Ferriss seemed to keep their heads. Then slowly ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... bloodshot eyes, the good things of others, she hates them for their possessions, longs to possess them herself, lets her covetousness gnaw hourly at her very vitals, and yet, in conversation with others, slays with slander, vile innuendo, and falsehood, the reputation of ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James
... analytical, but he found himself saying, "Looks like a chap who'd been through something. What?" Being "through something" meant more than the experience incidental to a wedding and a honeymoon. With that thought torture began to gnaw at Claude's soul again, so that when his brother was called to the telephone to answer a lady who was asking what her little boy should take for a certain pain, he ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... her tears, "I feel sore at heart. But my tears are scantier by far than they were in years gone by. With all the grief and anguish, which gnaw my heart, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... a large bone. Jonas said that he was undoubtedly a dog that had lost his master, and had been wandering about to find him, until he became very hungry. So he said they would leave him in the yard to gnaw his bone, and that then he would probably go away. Josey wanted to shut him up and keep him, but Jonas said it would ...
— Jonas on a Farm in Winter • Jacob Abbott
... Love and Truth that in my plays abide Shall teach the lesson of equal justice; Nothing that's wrong can prosper on this earth, And though your crime-secret be hid in mounts Of adamant, kissing, loftiest sky, The worm of detection and exposure Shall gnaw its way through rugged, granite ribs And blow your foul wickedness around the world. Men, states and empires, rise and flash like bubbles On the rolling ocean of existence, And then like the false, shimmering vision Of a dream, pass into nameless oblivion. The hours, ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... Erlandson's two men. By his letters I was grieved to learn that starvation stared him in the face; the fishing, that promised so well when I passed, having entirely failed, and no deer were to be found. He wrote me, however, that he would maintain his post while a piece of parchment remained to gnaw! ...
— Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory - Volume II. (of 2) • John M'lean
... me. He runs again and jumps, the line comes back in my face, all slack, something has given. It is the hook, it was not knotted on firmly to start with. He flings himself out of the water once more to be sure that he is free, and I sit down and gnaw the reel. Had ever anybody such bad fortune, but it is ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, April 2, 1892 • Various
... stands on the highest point of the crags at the uttermost end of the island. On the side towards the sea the rock was once rent sheer away in some globe-cataclysm; it rises up a straight wall from the base where the waves gnaw at the stone below high-water mark. Any assault is made impossible by the dangerous reefs that stretch far out to sea, with the sparkling waves of the Mediterranean playing over them. So, only from the sea can you discern the square mass of ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... sometimes it leads to the desert and the tongue swells out of the mouth, And you stagger blind to the mirage, to die in the mocking drouth. And sometimes it leads to the mountain, to the light of the lone camp-fire, And you gnaw your belt in the ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... owners depart to the ladangs, thinking that it means a chase of the wild pig. Equally eager are they to get into the room at night, or at any time when the owner has left them outside. Doors are cleverly opened by them, but when securely locked the dogs sometimes, in their impatience, gnaw holes in the lower part of the door which look like the work of rodents, though none that I saw was large enough to admit a canine of their size. One day a big live pig was brought in from the utan over the shoulder of a strong man, its legs tied together, and as a compliment ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... suggestion of evil by a stronger mind, Guy Waring began to walk on in a feverish fashion, fast, fast, oh, so fast, not knowing where he went, but conscious only that he must keep moving, lest an accusing conscience should gnaw his very heart out. ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... Fisher of Men, because he pounces from the highest sky on fish swimming on the surface of the water and carries them up, the eagle, classed in Leviticus and Deuteronomy with the unclean beasts, is transformed, as being a bird of prey, into a personification of the Devil snatching away souls to gnaw and tear them. ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... at seeing carpets fly out of window, ancient cobwebs come down, and long-undisturbed closets routed out to the great dismay of moths and mice, has been already confided to the cats, and as she sat there watching them lap and gnaw, she said ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... the pier's low undertone Of waves that chafe and gnaw; You start,—a skipper's horn is blown To raise the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... and the more it eats the hungrier it grows. The farmer in debt, lying awake at night, can, if he listens, hear it gnaw. If he owes nothing, he can hear his corn grow. Get out of debt as soon as you possibly can. You have supported idle avarice ...
— The Ghosts - And Other Lectures • Robert G. Ingersoll
... I that called the masque at my house where first the King did see her. It was I that advised her how to bear herself. And what gratitude has been shown me? I have been sent to sequester myself in my see; I have been set to gnaw my fingers as they had been old bones thrown to a dog. Truly, no juicy meats have been my share. Yet it was I set this woman ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford
... son of Jove," answered Chilo. "Real virtue is a ware for which no one inquires now, and a genuine sage must be glad of this even, that once in five days he has something with which to buy from the butcher a sheep's head, to gnaw in a garret, washing it down with his tears. Ah, lord! What thou didst give me I paid Atractus for books, and afterward I was robbed and ruined. The slave who was to write down my wisdom fled, taking the remnant of what thy generosity bestowed on me. I am in misery, but I ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... animal; paid no heed to the firing of a gun, but became alert at the cracking of a nut; sometimes grew wildly angry; all his powers were then enlarged; was delighted with hills and woods, and always tried to escape after being taken to them; when angry would gnaw clothing and hurl furniture about; feared to look from a height, and Itard cured him of spasms of rage by holding his head out of a window; met all efforts to teach him with apathy, and ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... forth and stroked the bow-bearer's hand, a condescension which made the footstool-bearer, parasol-bearer, quiver-bearer, and a dozen great lords more gnaw their lips with envy. Hydarnes, the commander who had waited an auspicious moment, now thought it safe to kneel on the lowest step of ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... girl, not ill-looking, not ill-made, starving, without a lover or the portion to buy one. What is to be done with me? What is to be the end of me? It seems that the world has to answer me that question. Am I to stop at Condoglia, and gnaw my knuckles, and work to the bone for another's benefit, and kennel with dogs and chicken? Why, my going will benefit them. The chicken will have more to eat. Or say that I do stop there—what then? Having nothing, needing much, I marry ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... wrought by the tides into the semblance of a head, a veritable giant's head, with masses of long, intertangled weeds on its top and sides, like the strange, wild unkempt locks of a sea-god; its front showing blurred features like a carven face eaten away by the slow gnaw of ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... justice, and of the terribleness of the punishment that hath swallowed him up that has lost himself. Here will be no forgetfulness; yet nothing shall be thought on but that which will wound and kill; here will be no time, cause, or means for diversion; all will stick and gnaw like a viper. Now the memory will go out to where sin was heretofore committed, it will also go out to the word that did forbid it. The understanding also, and the judgment too, will now consider of the pretended necessity that the man ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... times their natural size, and both proceeding in the same direction. It ought to be mentioned, however, that in reality the margin of the leaf is seldom allowed to retain its natural serrations as here depicted: the ants usually gnaw the edge of the real leaf, so that the margin of the false one bears an even closer resemblance to it than the illustration represents. B is a drawing from life of a group of five ants carrying leaves, and their mimic ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes
... the boys were starving with hunger, and could have eaten anything. They even tried to gnaw at bits of leather cut out of their boots, but they were so tough and sodden from their long immersion in the sea that they ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... horse-shoes and wheel-pins, and in a great gap in the road, over which we had to lead the horses, and haul the carriage separately. At this place we supplicated our agitator for leave to eat a little breakfast; but he would not stop an instant, and we were obliged to snatch up a roll or two apiece and gnaw the dry crusts during our passage to keep soul and body together. We got in soon after one, and I have spent my time in eating, drinking, sleeping, and other recreations, down ...
— A Hundred Years by Post - A Jubilee Retrospect • J. Wilson Hyde
... the dog, and wanted to be kind to him; so, when their mother told them this, they got out of the cart, and Zip was unharnessed and given some cold water to drink and a nice bone on which to gnaw. ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Grandma Bell's • Laura Lee Hope
... as he fired the lion was in the air launching itself at him, but falling short, rolling over upon its side, and beginning to tear and gnaw at the dry grass in its ...
— Off to the Wilds - Being the Adventures of Two Brothers • George Manville Fenn
... to take the Sawdust Doll home to my kennel, so my little puppies will have something to gnaw and to play with," went ...
— The Story of a Bold Tin Soldier • Laura Lee Hope
... began to gnaw at my heart ... I dreamed still of what I would do when I had grown to be a man ... but now it was not any more to be a great traveller or explorer, but to grow into a strong man and kill my uncle, first putting him to some savage form of torture ... ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... wife are mated well, In harmony together dwell, Are faithful to each other, The streams of bliss flow constantly What bliss of angels is on high From hence may we discover; No storm, No worm Can destroy it, Can e'er gnaw it, What God giveth To the pair that ...
— Paul Gerhardt's Spiritual Songs - Translated by John Kelly • Paul Gerhardt
... he would rush on the scent and greedily swallow whatever was offered. When he realised the sad truth that a huge hook with a strong barb was hidden inside this tempting dish and that it was no easy matter to disgorge the tasty morsel, he would try to gnaw through the shaft of the hook with his teeth. Very occasionally he might succeed, but usually his efforts failed. Attached to the book was a length of strong iron chain; and sometimes, though defeated by the hook, he would manage to snip through the chain. Then, in his joy at being ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... that growth will only be a growth into greater power of feeling greater sorrow. Such an one grows up into a Hercules; but it is only that the Nessus shirt may wrap round him more tightly, and may gnaw him with a fiercer agony. But whether saved or lost—he that dies is greater than when yet living; and all his powers are intensified and strengthened by that awful experience of death and by what it brings ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... a curate, "be willingly granted by Messieurs of the upper clergy who suffer monks to enjoy from 5 to 6,000 livres income each person, whilst they see curates, who are at least as necessary, reduced to the lighter portion, as little for themselves as for their parish?"—And they yet gnaw on this slight pittance to pay the free gift. In this, as in the rest, the poor are charged to discharge the rich. In the diocese of Clermont, "the curates, even with the simple fixed rates, are subject to a tax of 60, 80, 100, 120 livres and even more; the vicars, who live only by ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... the morals of their inhabitants. Here drunkenness and gambling, two vices of which the Americans were ignorant in the time of the founders of their great federation, have taken very deep root. The decrease of the inflexible spirit of religion, and the increase of vice and luxury, gnaw the powerful tree, and are fearful enemies, which cannot be resisted by a structure that might resist with scorn all foreign foes, and would have played a mighty part in the world's history had the spirit of Washington and Franklin remained with it. The annexation ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 9. - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 26, 1850 • Various
... Gnaw on, my elfish rodent! Lay all the sages low! My pretty lace and ribbons, They're yours for weal or woe! My pocket-book's in tatters Because you ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... Cat to climb a tree, and when he needed help to call out for him. Night coming on, water began to rise about the base of the tree, and the Giant Beaver came and began to gnaw at its base. The friendly ants[16] tried to keep the tree upright, but the water continued to rise and the Beaver kept on gnawing. Then the Black Cat in his sore dilemma called out, "Grandpa, come!" The grandfather responded, "I am coming; wait till I get my moccasins." The water rose higher. Again ...
— Contribution to Passamaquoddy Folk-Lore • J. Walter Fewkes
... in his Bible this passage: 'As the worm gnaweth the garment and rottenness the wood, so doth the weariness of solitude gnaw the ...
— The Solitary of Juan Fernandez, or The Real Robinson Crusoe • Joseph Xavier Saintine
... Apollo told even to me. You are sailing to Italy, and you shall reach Italy and enter its harbors. But you are not destined to surround your city with a wall, till cruel hunger and vengeance for the wrong you have done us force you to gnaw your ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... copy-books." He lifted one of the white mice in the palm of his hand, and spoke to it in his whimsical way. "My pretty little smooth white rascal," he said, "here is a moral lesson for you. A truly wise mouse is a truly good mouse. Mention that, if you please, to your companions, and never gnaw at the bars of your cage again as ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... things progressing before he started off. A fire had already been started, and the cheery flames did much toward dispelling the feeling of gloom that had begun to gnaw at their hearts. There is nothing in the world better calculated to dissipate worry and liven things up than a genuine camp-fire. It seems to dissipate doubt, give the heart something to grip, and in every ...
— Afloat on the Flood • Lawrence J. Leslie
... & dreamed, thought that the veines of his armes were broken, and that the blood issued out in great abundance. Likewise, he was told by Robert Fitz Hammon, that a moonke should dreame in his sleepe, how he saw the king gnaw the image of Christ crucified, with his teeth, and that as he was about to bite awaie the legs of the same image, Christ with his feet should spurne him downe to the ground, insomuch that as he lay on the earth, there came out of his mouth a flame of fire, ...
— Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (2 of 6): England (2 of 12) - William Rufus • Raphael Holinshed
... their natural position. In other caves, the thorax and the vertebrae of the skeletons were missing; the cave-man, having despatched his victim, bad evidently taken only the more succulent parts into his retreat. Beasts of prey merely gnaw the comparatively tender and spongy tops of the bones, leaving the hard, compact parts untouched. In the caves that were inhabited by man, however, we find the apophyses neglected, whilst the diaphyses are split open. We cannot, ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... when they think of their sins, they are comforted with the thoughts of their being delivered from them; but the ungodly, when they think of their righteousness, will gnaw themselves, to think that this would not deliver ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... must not complain. But it is not the accusation that admits of defence, the arrow that flies at noonday, that is most to be feared. It is the cold, inscrutable glance, the chilled and altered manner, the suspicion that walketh in darkness,—it is these that try the strength of woman's love, and gnaw with slow but certain tooth the cable-chain that holds the anchor of her fidelity. These are the evil spirits which prayer and fasting alone can cast out. They may fly before the uplifted eye and bended ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... of quenching thirst. Blessed consummation! Then Poverty shall pass away from the land, finding no hovel so wretched where her squalid form may shelter itself. Then Disease, for lack of other victims, shall gnaw his own heart and die. Then Sin, if she do not die, shall ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... Jove would cuff, He's so bluff, For a straw. Cowed deities, Like mice in cheese, To stir must cease Or gnaw.' ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... drink, and let it be choice," cried the robber. "I have well earned my day. Serve supper, Calabash; Martial shall gnaw our bones—good enough for him. Now let us talk of the customer, 'Quai de Billy,' for to-morrow or next day that must come off, if I wish to pocket the money he promised. I am going to tell you, mother; but some drink—thunder! let's ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... spacious solitude of the museum gallery devoted to the Raphael cartoons sat Lewisham, plunged in gloomy meditation. A negligent hand pulled thoughtfully at the indisputable moustache, with particular attention to such portions as were long enough to gnaw. ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... apt to be busy and mischievous infesters of libraries. They are extremely fond of paste, and being in a chronic state of hunger, they watch opportunities of getting at any library receptacle of it. They will gnaw any fresh binding, whether of cloth, board, or leather, to get at the coveted food. They will also gnaw some books, and even pamphlets, without any apparent temptation of a succulent nature. A good library cat or a series of mouse traps, skilfully baited, ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... found (a molar) was worn entirely below the enamel except for a small space at the front; the dentine was polished until it resembled a piece of agate. Mr. De Lancey Gill first remarked the fact that wear of this character denotes that the individual did not gnaw bones, crack nuts, or indeed bite hard on any substance. If he had done so this thin shred of enamel would have broken off. Two large rocks which lay on the head and body seem to have been thus placed before the grave was ...
— Archeological Investigations - Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 76 • Gerard Fowke
... Zeres to-morrow? No, it's just as I said: we must get our hands free; we must kill all these fellows, and be off." "But how are we to get our hands free, Rube?" "That's the only point I can't make out," he said. "If these fellows would leave us alone, it would be easy enough; we could gnaw through each other's thongs in ten minutes; but they won't let us do that. All the rest is easy enough. Just think it over, Seth." I did think it over, but I did not see my way to getting rid of our thongs. ...
— Out on the Pampas - The Young Settlers • G. A. Henty
... their disease, And find out means to ease them of their grief; Special good surgeons to cure dangerous wounds: For, stricken with a stake into the flesh, This policy they use to get it out: They trail one of their feet upon the ground, And gnaw the flesh about where the wound is Till it be clean drawn out: and then, because Ulcers and sores kept foul are hardly cur'd, They lick and purify it with their tongue, And well observe Hippocrates' old rule, The only medicine for ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... nervous watch dog, must sit on the door-stone of his system, and bark incessantly at everything that comes in sight along the highway. And when there is nothing to bark at, either he must growl and gnaw his reserved bones, or bark at the moon to keep up the sonorousness of his voice. And so, for fear that the sweetness of our temper may lead men to think that we have no theologic zeal, we lift up in objurgation now and then—as much ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... bad as we did to lose our faithful old friends, and all the winter long we grieved, the kids and me. Every time the coyotes yelped we knew they were gathering to gnaw poor old Nick and Fan's bones. And pa, to keep from crying himself when the kids and me would be sobbin', would scold us. 'My goodness,' he would say, 'the horses are dead and they don't know nothin' about cold and hunger. They don't know nothin' about sore ...
— Letters on an Elk Hunt • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... burrow. She was so near that the Child could have touched her by reaching out his hand. But she took no more notice of him than if he had been a rotten stump. Less, in fact, for she might have tried to gnaw into him if he had been a rotten stump, in the ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... mistakes, but there is one thing I would have altered. If He intended us for such a rough life, He should have made the human frame capable of going longer without food. To a poor soldier marching from Moscow to have to stop every three hours and gnaw a piece of horse that has died—and raw—it is ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... learned to reach up on his hind legs and gnaw the standing plant. The management of a dry and slippery corn-ear at first presented some difficulty, but, as his muscles strengthened, he found himself able to sit up on his haunches and hold it squirrel-fashion ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... brought back civilization to their thoughts, even though life had gone back to primitive things with just life and death, hunger and thirst, love and courage, as the laws of existence. The man who had a corkscrew could command respect. A lady with gold-spun hair could gnaw a chicken bone without any loss of beauty. The chauffeurs munched solidly, making cockney jokes out of full mouths and abolishing all distinctions of caste by their comradeship in great adventures when their courage, their cool nerve, their fine endurance ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... fool, but he earns his money," Matteo responded, and, drawing a plate of deliciously fried frogs toward him, began to gnaw them and throw the bones on ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 2 • Various
... conscience shall speak to him, and so the worse he is, and the more he needs it, the less he has it. The rebels cut the telegraph wires. The waves break the bell that hangs on the reef, and so the black rocks get many a wreck to gnaw with their sharp teeth. A man makes his conscience dumb by the very sins that require a conscience trumpet-tongued to reprehend them. And therefore it needs that God should speak from Heaven, and say to us, 'Thou art the man,' or else we pass by all these grave things that ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... eat insects and their grubs or their eggs, he is also very fond of some kinds of nuts, like beech and chestnuts," said the Doctor, "and he may be obliged to live entirely upon them in winter, when insects fail him. Having no teeth to gnaw and crack them open as squirrels do, he takes a nut in his claws and either holding it thus, or jamming it tight into a crack in the bark, then uses his bill for a hatchet to split or hack the nut open. I have seen the ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... was hungry and vicious. He had lived in the white "settlements," and knew something. He was fastened by a long hide lariat to a peg driven into the ground, as were all the others, and he knew that the best place to gnaw in two that lariat was close to the peg, where he could get a good pull upon it. As soon as he had freed himself he tried the lariat of another mule, and found that the peg had been driven into loose earth and came right up. That was ...
— Two Arrows - A Story of Red and White • William O. Stoddard
... the rat, 'gnaw your own tail;' and off he went laughing at the joke. The miserable weasel cried and sniffed, and sniffed and cried, till by-and-by he heard the rat come back and begin to scratch outside. Presently the rat stopped, and was going away again, when ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... that Strauss had been his forerunner, having upset the notion that music must be beautiful to be music and seeing the real significance of the characteristic, the ugly. Had Strauss developed courage or gone to the far East when young—Illowski would shrug his high shoulders, gnaw his cigarette and ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... Our people gnaw the doom fruit, but it is just like gnawing the bark of a tree, slightly flavoured with some aroma. They begin to eat them from childhood, and so keep on, as the gour-nuts are chewed by children; and so the taste is sucked in with ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson
... crew; Then in his low and pine-built hall, Where shields and axes deck'd the wall, They gorged upon the half-dress'd steer; Caroused in seas of sable beer; While round, in brutal jest, were thrown The half-gnaw'd rib, and marrow bone: Or listen'd all, in grim delight. While Scalds yell'd out the joys of fight. Then forth, in frenzy, would they hie, While wildly-loose their red locks fly, And dancing round the blazing pile, They make such barbarous mirth the while, ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... J. Hinton Knowles' Folk-Tales of Kashmir a merchant gives his stupid son a small coin with which he is to purchase something to eat, something to drink, something to gnaw, something to sow in the garden, and some food for the cow. A clever young girl advises him to buy a water-melon, which would answer all the ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... yield to John Barleycorn while working in the laundry, a certain definite result was produced. I had heard the call, felt the gnaw of desire, yearned for the anodyne. I was being prepared for the stronger desire of ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... grip on the wits by which he had lived, bade the Capuchin hold up his wrists. Then he went nosing like a dog, until at last he found them, and his strong teeth fastened upon the cord that bound them, and began with infinite patience to gnaw it through. ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... at the wreckage that is heaped along the shore Where the waters gnaw unceasing and endeavor ...
— Oklahoma Sunshine • Freeman E. (Freeman Edwin) Miller
... may call their own, however small it be, try to make a party for themselves; each, revolving on his or her own axis, will attempt to self-centre a private whirlpool of human monads. To draw such a surrounding, the partisan of self will sometimes gnaw asunder the most precious of bonds, poison whole broods of infant loves. Such real schismatics go about, where not inventing evil, yet rejoicing in iniquity; mishearing; misrepresenting; paralyzing affection; separating hearts. Their chosen ...
— Hope of the Gospel • George MacDonald
... a comparatively simple state of society and primitive treasures. Moths gnaw rich garments. Rust, or more properly corruption, would get into a man's barns and vineyards, hay-crops and fruits. Thieves would steal the hoard that he had laid by, for want of better investment. Or to generalise, corruption, the natural process of wearing away, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... pedantries of many modern so-called "stylists," I rejoice that Dumas was not one of these. He told a plain tale, in the language suited to a plain tale, with abundance of wit and gaiety, as in the reflections of his Chicot, as in all his dialogues. But he did not gnaw the end of his pen in search of some word that nobody had ever used in this or that connection before. The right word came to him, the simple straightforward phrase. Epithet-hunting may be a pretty sport, and the bag of the epithet-hunter may contain some agreeable ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... angrily, and turned a suspicious eye on me. "The Hanover rat,—George!... And the blight works—oh, it works, and the brain rots in his head and the maggots gnaw at his heart. And they wonder why!... an effectual fervent curse!—Oh, it works! For years and years I've cursed him night and day and—you see! Keep him in the dark, they said. Let no man speak to him for a twelvemonth and a day, they said. And no man spoke, but I myself, and all day ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... or suggest, or suggest, or suggest, haov, rij, [w]heg and who, come, on, you know what I mean, as well as [h]orses. War rod: scepter, sceptic, syllables, bless, access, axes, oxen, Christ-cross, beaux, beauty, ancre, kernel, acres, craz'd, threatned, knead, bootes, Bootes, winged, gnaw'd: th is cut of from with, cum, after another of the ...
— Magazine, or Animadversions on the English Spelling (1703) • G. W.
... up one of my comrades, notwithstanding his loud cries, and the efforts he made to rid himself of the serpent; which, shaking him several times against the ground, crushed him, and we could hear him gnaw and tear the poor wretch's bones, when we had fled at a great distance from him. Next day we saw the serpent again, to our great terror, when I cried out, O Heaven, to what dangers are we exposed! We rejoiced yesterday ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous
... presentiment told me that we might want drink. At that hour the camp was a melancholy sight: the Europeans surly because they had discussed a bottle of cognac when they should have slept; the good Sayyid without his coffee, and perhaps without his prayers; Wakl Mohammed sorrowfully attempting to gnaw tooth-breaking biscuit; and the Bedawin working and walking like somnambules. However, at 5.10 a.m. we struck north, over a low divide of trap hill, by a broad and evidently made road, and regained the Wady el-Kubbah: here it is a pleasant spectacle rich in trees, ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 2 • Richard Burton
... bird-beaked creature, with long legs and horns laid flat by its sides, and miniature wings on its back. Observe that the sides of the tail, and one pair of legs, are fringed with dark hairs. After a fortnight's rest in this prison this 'nymph' will gnaw her way out and swim through the water on her back, by means of that fringed tail and paddles, till she reaches the bank and the upper air. There, under the genial light of day, her skin will burst, and a four-winged fly emerge, to buzz over the water as a fawn-coloured Caperer— deadliest ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... catch a mouse," said the dog, "and the mouse must gnaw a hole in the chest and fetch out the ring. And if she does not want to, say that you will bite her to death, and you will see ...
— The Chinese Fairy Book • Various
... frisk so fresh, To worms I can compare, Which greedily shall gnaw my flesh, And leave the bones full bare: The waking cock that early crows, To wear the night away, Puts in my mind the trump that blows Before ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... of puppies should be kenneled together, where they may be encouraged to fight, which will make them fiercer, but they should never be suffered to tire themselves since weariness develops cowardice. They should also be accustomed to be tied, at first with a light leash, and if they attempt to gnaw it they should be punished by whipping, so that they may not get the habit. On rainy days their kennels should be bedded with leaves or grass, for two reasons: that they may not soil themselves or ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... so beastly expensive—but whenever I have I simply bite bits off it as I happen to want them. But I know that's not polite. If you prefer it, Cousin Frank, you can gouge out a chunk or two with your knife before I gnaw it." ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... piece of bread, drank only a mouthful of wine, and nevertheless saw death daily drawing nearer. Whilst he thus gazed before him, he saw a snake creep out of a corner of the vault and approach the dead body. And as he thought it came to gnaw at it, he drew his sword and said, "As long as I live, thou shalt not touch her," and hewed the snake in three pieces. After a time a second snake crept out of the hole, and when it saw the other lying dead and cut in pieces, it went back, but soon came again with three green leaves in its mouth. ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... recovered his good humour. "Since your heart beats for vermin, feel for the carrion crows! they be as good vermin as these; would ye send them to bed supperless, poor pretty poppets? Why, these be their larder; the pangs of hunger would gnaw them dead, but for cold cut-purse hung up here ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... noise as he wound himself along. It swallowed up one of my comrades, notwithstanding his loud cries, and the efforts he made to extricate himself from it; dashing him several times against the ground, it crushed him, and we could hear it gnaw and tear the poor wretch's bones, though we had fled to a considerable distance. The following day, to our great terror, we saw the serpent again, when I exclaimed, "O heaven, to what dangers are we exposed! We rejoiced yesterday at having escaped from ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... said James, "he could not gnaw any thing on his own neck." Rollo thought so too, and they both tried to bite their own collar ribands, by way of showing Jonas how impossible ...
— Rollo at Play - Safe Amusements • Jacob Abbott
... to its meaning. She peered round a tree, and saw something which took her breath away. Jim was kneeling on the ground, hacking with his jack-knife at the earth. Then from the excavated foot or so he took a root, scraped it with the knife, and began to gnaw it like a dog. She had heard of edible roots, on which half-starved Indians in the North managed to subsist for long periods. But for Jim to do this.... Her brain reeled at the sight. The significance of it dawned upon her. He was afraid of the future. He knew the ...
— Colorado Jim • George Goodchild
... is worth more than a little thing like your life," said the Captain. "We'll spare you some of our good food, to show you that we French do not have to gnaw our finger-nails, like you miserable Boches. Men, take this ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... more so. Do you forget the angels who lost heaven for the daughters of men? Do you forget Helen, and the fair women who made mischief and set nations by the ears before Helen was born? If jealousies that gnaw men's hearts out of their bodies,—if pangs that waste men to shadows and drive them into raving madness or moping melancholy,—if assassination and suicide are dreadful possibilities, then there is always something frightful about a lovely ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... apologetic tone explained: "I dassent lay down or I'll get rheumatism. Tough guys- -frontiersmen—Pah!" He spat out the exclamation with disgust, then closed his eyes again and sank back against his burden. "Coyotes! That's what they are! They'd rob a carcass, they'd gnaw each other's bones to get through ahead ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... surer these spider swarms could not drop into the ravine, he found a place where he could sit down, and sat and fell into deep thought and began, after his manner, to gnaw his knuckles and bite his nails. And from this he was moved by the coming of the man ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... fragrant. More than once have I satisfied my hunger with it during these disastrous days when the briars have turned into rose-colored crystals, and when the agile wagtail utters its shrill cry toward the larvae which its beak can no longer reach beneath the ice along the banks. I shall continue to gnaw these barks. For, Oh Francis, I do not wish to die with these gentle friends who are in their agony, but rather I wish to live beside you and obtain my sustenance from the ...
— Romance of the Rabbit • Francis Jammes
... he hadde a space fro his care, 505 Thus to him-self ful ofte he gan to pleyne; He sayde, 'O fool, now art thou in the snare, That whilom Iapedest at loves peyne; Now artow hent, now gnaw thyn owene cheyne; Thou were ay wont eche lovere reprehende 510 Of thing fro which thou canst thee ...
— Troilus and Criseyde • Geoffrey Chaucer
... Fink; "that is all very well; but we did not want a whole clan of women and children into the bargain; the castle is as full as a bee-hive—more than sixty mouths; to say nothing of a dozen horses; spite of your potato-carts, we shall have to gnaw the stones before ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... on th' peerary,—a bigger crowd than ye cud get to go f'r to see a prize fight. Both sides had their frinds that give th' colledge cries. Says wan crowd: 'Take an ax, an ax, an ax to thim. Hooroo, hooroo, hellabaloo. Christyan Bro-others!' an' th' other says, 'Hit thim, saw thim, gnaw thim, chaw thim, Saint Alo-ysius!' Well, afther awhile they got down to wur-ruk. 'Sivin, eighteen, two, four,' says a la-ad. I've seen people go mad over figures durin' th' free silver campaign, but I ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various
... cacao trees should, as already stated, have sufficient shade to prevent their being burned by the sun. If they are much exposed to its rays, their branches are scattered, crack, and the tree dies. They are also infested with worms, which gnaw the bark all around, then attack the interior and destroy them. The only remedy which has hitherto been found, is to employ people to kill these worms, which are deposited by a small, scaly winged insect, which gnaws the tree; as soon as it hears the approach of its destroyers, ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
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