"Slippery" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... strong enough to dine out, Tom," said his wife, peevishly. "I can't drive so far, and I'm terrified of the ferry at night, with those slippery banks." ...
— Peter's Mother • Mrs. Henry De La Pasture
... clouds of ore-dust continually rising, water dripping on all sides, and the miner's lamp gradually growing dimmer and dimmer. The effect was really benumbing, I breathed with difficulty, and had trouble in holding to the slippery rounds. It was not fright which overpowered me, but, oddly enough, down there in the depths, I remembered that a year before, about the same time, I had been in a storm on the North Sea, and ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... earnestly). Hear, Mortimer! It is a false and slippery ground on which You tread. The grace of princes is alluring, Youth loves ambition—let ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... battered hats, covering the tiers of muddy wheels with their coat-tails, that the tulle and tartelaine may not be spoiled—hoping your Honour will "remember" them!—as they cast uncertain shadows upon the icy pavement—ice that has been rendered none the less slippery by their cutting out a slide upon it, with the assistance of the police, during the evening:—such a banging of doors, clashing of steps, and stopping up the way, under the little awning, over the carriage-sweep—a pretty pass, so narrow that, we are sorry to say, the hackney-drivers instituted ...
— Christmas Comes but Once A Year - Showing What Mr. Brown Did, Thought, and Intended to Do, - during that Festive Season. • Luke Limner
... from the dripping canoe and land them on the slippery rock. A minute later and Narcisse perhaps would appear, a bit bent, to keep balanced a bag of flour, a chest of tea, a caddy of tobacco and sundry packages of sugar or shot that made up the load resting on his shoulders where body and nape of neck ...
— The Story of Isaac Brock - Hero, Defender and Saviour of Upper Canada, 1812 • Walter R. Nursey
... only make surmises," Bell replied. "Van Sneck was a slippery dog. Of course, he had found two of those plates. He kept the one back so as to sell the other at a fancy price. My enemy discovered this, and Van Sneck's sudden flight was his opportunity. He could afford to get rid of me at an apparently dear rate. He stole ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... conflict; several of the pirates had been killed, the deck was slippery with blood, and the rest were keeping their ground with difficulty. I had a long and severe hand-to-hand fight with one of them. We had each received desperate wounds, when his foot slipped on the bloody deck. I gave him a severe stroke on the head with a tomahawk, and, after a deadly struggle ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... as Jack thought very unpleasant—walking. The sleepers on which the rails for the corves, or little waggons, were laid, were very slippery. Pools of water stood between them and often covered them, and blocks of coal of all sizes, which had shaken from the corves, lay in the road. When it was not water it was black mud. Sometimes a line of waggons full or empty stood on the ...
— Facing Death - The Hero of the Vaughan Pit. A Tale of the Coal Mines • G. A. Henty
... his back, swashed in his shoes; he was, in his lowered vitality, supremely uncomfortable. The way was slippery with mud; wet leaves bathed his face in sudden, chill showers, clung ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... Epicurean in him revolted at the idea of losing a moment of this complete well-being, and arguing that if the wind blew here, it must be dead calm below the kitchen window on the other side of the house, he got off his rail and walked along the slippery bank at the edge of the flooded road in order to go there. It was hard to keep his footing here, and his progress was slow, but he felt he would take any amount of trouble to avoid getting his feet wet in the ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... this is only the beginning,—Snider's been rustling around amongst a lot of women and old people over in Lanesport, and they're about ready to make over their bank- accounts to him. They LIKE him, you know,—a lot of folks DO like just that kind of slippery snake. It's funny,—you'd think anyone with ordinary common-sense would grab hold of his watch and his small change, and hang on to it—hard, as soon as Br'er Snider hove in sight. But no,—they try to crowd their money onto him... Real gold! Of course it was real,—that's ...
— The Voyage of the Hoppergrass • Edmund Lester Pearson
... The weeks I spent in Edinburgh are among the most memorable of my European experiences. To the Highlands, to the Lakes, in short excursions; to Glasgow, seen to disadvantage under gray skies and with slippery pavements. Through England rapidly to Dover and to Calais, where I found the name of M. Dessein still belonging to the hotel I sought, and where I read Sterne's "Preface Written in a Desobligeante," sitting in the vehicle most like one that I could find in the stable. From Calais ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... stalked to the door, laid his finger on his lip, winked knowingly, and vanished, leaving Mr. Beaufort a prey to such feelings of uneasiness, dread, and terror, as may be experienced by a man whom, on some inch or two of slippery rock, ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 4 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... faint idea of a mob of native boatmen storming a ship at Jaffa. Of course, the ladders are filled first, then those who have missed the ladders drive bang against the ship, grab a rope or cable, or anything they can grasp, and run up the iron, slippery side of the ship as a squirrel runs up ...
— McClure's Magazine December, 1895 • Edited by Ida M. Tarbell
... them, and intent on making my plea I burst into the parlor. The scene there chilled my ardor. In the dim evening light, like sombre ghosts, the company sat in a wide circle about the borders of the room, erect and uncomfortable as one must sit on slippery horse-hair, listening to Miss Spinner at the piano droning through the ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... could be properly served upon her, proceedings against her could not be carried out in England, and, once out of the house in which she now was known, or at least believed, to be, so slippery a lady, as she had already proved herself, would be very difficult to find. To effect an entrance into the house and to serve the writ upon her personally was evidently impossible, and the only alternative ...
— The Curious Case of Lady Purbeck - A Scandal of the XVIIth Century • Thomas Longueville
... to take it off Jehosophat's hook himself, the eel was so slippery and wriggled so. Before the sun went down, the children had each caught two fish. There were three sunfish, two perch, and ...
— Seven O'Clock Stories • Robert Gordon Anderson
... the present glance of the enemy, and at length, in safety, rounding a jutting point of the shore, which effectually concealed him from their eyes, he gained the dry land, at the very moment in which Munro, with more success, was clambering, still mounted, up the steep sides of a neighboring and slippery bank. ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... speed before they came to the wharf, which just here by the station jutted out in a grey bastion surmounted by the minatory finger of a derrick, and some of them climbed out and put round baskets full of shining fish upon their heads, and, walking struttingly to brake their heavy boots on the slippery mud, followed a wet track up to the cinderpath. They looked stunted and fantastic like Oriental chessmen. It was strange, but this place had the quality of beauty. It laid a finger on the heart. Moreover, it had a solemn quality of importance. It was as if this was the primeval ooze ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... still came. Then up I gat, and to the pressing world Sped on the wings of passion, striving on Thro' pleasure and thro' pain, alike unchecked. Then, what were lets to me? Amongst the strong I wrestled for ambition's upper seats— Clung to the slippery shrouds of policy— And in my fury prayed for eagle's wings To poize me in the shadow of the sun. At wealth I grasped as a poor crippled wretch Grasps at the crutch that steadies him along; Yet not for it but for ...
— Eidolon - The Course of a Soul and Other Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... the father met with a serious accident during this excursion. In descending from the hills, rendered exceedingly slippery from the recent rains, he had the misfortune to fall, which both bruised his leg in a very severe manner, and also occasioned ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... our party trusted to their own legs; and, after picking their way through sludge and mire, along murky alleys that branched off into wharves and quays, and up slippery by-ways that looked like paved staircases without regular steps, the four emerged upon an open space in front of a noble church. Leaving this on their left hand, they turned short into a place that wore something the appearance of a stable-yard,—with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... way to baffle the disease, yet it was through a desire to leave nothing undone, that might possibly in any way relieve him. The trapper gathered some roots noted for their cooling properties, and bruising them extracted their juice which was given to the patient, while a tea made by soaking slippery elm bark, was his constant drink. It all seemed to do no good; for his fever rose higher and burned fiercer, until his brain wandered, his eyes grew wild, and his skin became dry and husky. He raved alternately of home and his wanderings. At one time, talking familiarly with his friends, as ...
— The American Family Robinson - or, The Adventures of a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West • D. W. Belisle
... carts would pass, in order to avoid the long streams of ambulances and ammunition vans, as well as in the hope of finding better thoroughfares. A drizzling rain had set in the night before, making the roads, which up until now had been covered with a thick layer of dust, slippery and uncomfortable. Highways which heretofore had been seldom trodden, were full of ruts and bumps, and from Langy to Villiers there was hardly a corner but what showed signs of the invaders' passage. Over these green and fertile fields whose crops ...
— My Home In The Field of Honor • Frances Wilson Huard
... lesson of self-command and decision. Our girls are in danger of drifting and floating along the current of the hour, passive in critical moments, wanting in perseverance to carry out anything that requires steady effort. They are often forced to walk upon slippery ground; temptations sometimes creep on insensibly, and at others make such sudden attacks that the thing all others to be dreaded for girls is want of courage and decision of character. Those render them the best service who train them ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... but as she neared them they were only bushes or leaning, wind-beaten pines. She was drenched and her clothes seemed intolerably heavy. Oh, how David would laugh at her hat! She put up her hand, in its soaked and slippery glove, and touched the roses about the crown and laughed herself. "He won't mind," she said, contentedly. She had forgotten that he had stopped loving her. She began to sing under her breath the old tune of her gay, ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... than she had thought!... She drooped into an intoxication. Among all that he had said, he had not said that he was not stronger than she. He had not relinquished his authority. She felt it, sitting almost beneath him in the slippery chair. She knew that she would yield to him. She desired to yield to him. Her mind was full of sensuous images based on the abdication of her will ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... reached it, when I came upon one of the trenches where the peasants were in the habit of digging clay for their houses. It was more than twenty feet wide, and forty or fifty long, and the rain had made the sides very slippery; but as I heard the very breathing of the horses behind me, while my hair rose on my head, without thinking of aught else, I sprang forward, and fell upon my face: another fusileer of my company was already there. We rose as soon as we could, ...
— The Conscript - A Story of the French war of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... of the front-legs are dilated in many male beetles, or are furnished with broad cushions of hairs; and in many genera of water-beetles they are armed with a round flat sucker, so that the male may adhere to the slippery body of the female. It is a much more unusual circumstance that the females of some water-beetles (Dytiscus) have their elytra deeply grooved, and in Acilius sulcatus thickly set with hairs, as an aid to the male. The females ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... I have hung Above the raven's nest, by knots of grass And half-inch fissures in the slippery rock But ill-sustained, and almost (so it seemed) Suspended by the blast that blew amain, Shouldering the naked crag,—oh, at that time, While on the perilous ridge I hung alone, With what strange utterance did the loud dry wind Blow through my ear! The sky seemed not a sky Of earth,—and ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... rush to the gangways—a scampering ashore of visitors-a revolution of the wheels, and we were off—the pic-nic was begun! Two very mild cheers went up from the dripping crowd on the pier; we answered them gently from the slippery decks; the flag made an effort to wave, and failed; the "battery of guns" spake not—the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... duties, and truthful in speech. Sound and touch should be known as the two qualities of wind. Touch has been said to be of various kinds. Rough, cold and like wise hot, tender and clear, hard, oily, smooth, slippery, painful and soft, of twelve kinds is touch, which is the quality of wind, as said by Brahmanas crowned with success, conversant with duties, and possessed of a sight of truth. Now space has only one quality, and that is said to be ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... observer there was no cause for alarm. The decks were a bit slippery but not dangerous except to a novice; the hatches were on, and in the lighted galley the cook might be discovered moving about in a manner indicative of quiet security and ...
— Sea Urchins • W. W. Jacobs
... the fish, and Snoop awakened with a jump. Up to her feet she leaped like a flash, and then she saw the fish. Snoop was very fond of fish, and made a spring for the one Bert had caught. But the fish was wet and slippery, and no sooner had Snoop pounced on it with her claws than the fish slid across the deck of the houseboat. Snoop slid after it, just as she often slid across the kitchen oilcloth, when she sprang for a piece of string that Flossie or Freddie would pull along ...
— The Bobbsey Twins on a Houseboat • Laura Lee Hope
... the queen, as the ambassador concluded his reading. "This is no official document, but a most significant letter of instructions. I am expected to preserve peace between France and Austria. Ah, I fear that I am not calculated to walk the slippery arena of politics, and I confess to you that I feel in no wise drawn toward it. It does seem to me that a queen of nineteen may be pardoned if she feels some desire to enjoy life. I intend to begin by breaking ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... Barlasch sat down wearily against a pine tree, when they first caught sight of a distant church-tower. The country is much broken up into little valleys here, through which streams find their way to the Niemen. Each river necessitated a rapid descent and an arduous climb over slippery snow. ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... in their fright turned and trampled down the men behind. Rapidly the panic increased as the showers of missiles came tearing down, and soon the whole army was in a state of wild terror and confusion—a condition greatly assisted by the slippery nature of the ground. Then, with wild shouts, and brandishing their iron-studded clubs and their formidable halberts and scythes, down the mountain-side rushed, with the fury of their native avalanche, the heroic Confederates; ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... wrenched the dripping blade from Gale's hand; it no longer gleamed, but was warm and slippery in his fingers. Poleon held Stark's gun, ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... said, 'loved few things better than to abhor himself'. This is not the case with Timon, who neither loves to abhor himself nor others. All his vehement misanthropy is forced, up-hill work. From the slippery turns of fortune, from the turmoils of passion and adversity, he wishes to sink into the quiet of the grave. On that subject his thoughts are intent, on that he finds time and place to grow romantic. He digs his ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... hurry up the sloping street and turn the corner, then turned to pursue his own way, his steps much less lame and his looks far more healthful than they had been a month before. He reached the quay—narrow, slippery, and fishy, but not without beauty, as the green water lapped against the hewn stones, and rocked the little boats moored in the wide bay, sheltered by a richly-wooded promontory. 'Jem in a fit of romance! Well, whose fault will it be if we miss the tide? ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... all disaster! It shows formidable as we approach it, but there is at last no rough rasping friction, but the most slippery sliding surfaces. We fall soft on a thought; Ate Dea ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... were desirous of making observations in the interior, and they did not go in vain. They instantly returned, and told us they had seen two Arab tents upon a slight rising ground. We instantly directed our steps thither. We had to pass great downs of sand very slippery, and arrived in a large plain, streaked here and there with verdure; but the turf was so hard and piercing, we could scarcely walk over it without wounding our feet. Our presence in these frightful solitudes put to flight three or four Moorish shepherds, who herded ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard
... beautiful workmanship, evidently reared by Roman skill, surrounded a paved quadrangle raised upon a terrace approached on all sides by steps. These steps and the pavement were alike of stone, but where weeds could grow they had grown, and the footing was damp and slippery with rank vegetation ...
— Edwy the Fair or the First Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... was relieved from the charge of Ruth by his sister's presence, he had the more time to dwell upon the circumstances of her case—so far as they were known to him. He remembered his first sight of her; her little figure swaying to and fro as she balanced herself on the slippery stones, half smiling at her own dilemma, with a bright, happy light in the eyes that seemed like a reflection from the glancing waters sparkling below. Then he recalled the changed, affrighted look of those eyes as they ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... believed, at any rate at last, that it was because he would not. Cecil read his mind, had no faith in his gratitude, and accounted the duties of a dead friendship discharged by attempts to mitigate rather than to reverse his doom. Harassed by business and the toil of keeping his slippery footing, he would feel chiefly a dull irritation at the captive, whether guiltless or guilty, for the obstinacy of his dispute with accomplished facts. He ought, the Minister, like his avowed enemies, would think, to have acquiesced, and been still. Thus the two went ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... visible was one leading upwards and looking like a regular artificially constructed highway. At this point the Hellenes endeavoured to cross, but on their making the attempt the water proved 6 to be more than breast-deep, and the river bed was rough with great slippery stones, and as to holding their arms in the water, it was out of the question—the stream swept them away—or if they tried to carry them over the head, the body was left exposed to the arrows and other missiles; accordingly they turned back and encamped ...
— Anabasis • Xenophon
... Sir Knight," said Gaston, also leaping to the ground, while Eustace cautiously advanced along the narrow frame of wood on which the drawbridge had rested, slippery with the wet, and rendered still more perilous by the darkness. Gaston followed, balancing himself with some difficulty, and at last they safely reached the other side. Eustace tried the heavy gates, but found them fastened on ...
— The Lances of Lynwood • Charlotte M. Yonge
... beach. Then suddenly some huge figure started up between the rocks at her feet; she gave a little scream, her foot slipped, and in the next moment she lay—in Strand's arms. He offered no apology, but silently carried her over the slippery stones, and deposited her tenderly upon the smooth white sand. There it occurred to her that his attention was quite needless, but at the moment she was too ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... dangerous ground as that of the markhor. Living so much in the forest, it must be followed over steep inclines of short grass, which the melting snow has left with all the blades flattened downwards; and amid pine-trees, whose needle-like spines strew the ground and render it more slippery and treacherous than ice. If one falls on such ground, one instantly begins to slide down the incline with rapidly increasing velocity, and, unless some friendly bush or stone arrests one's progress, the chances are that one is carried over some precipice, and either ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... through dark and slippery ways They strive His rage to shun, His vengeful ministers of wrath Shall goad them as ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... them. In some places where it was very slippery the pups coasted, too! But they did not mean to. They did not like it. The sled was almost at the end of the slide when it struck a piece of ice. It flew around sideways and spilled all ...
— The Eskimo Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... under very unfavourable circumstances, in dark caves lighted by one, or sometimes by two candles, with a temperature varying from slightly above to slightly below the freezing-point, and with no surer foot-hold than that afforded by slippery slopes of ice and chaotic blocks of stone. In all cases, errors are due to want of skill, not of honesty; and I hope that they do not generally lie on the side ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne
... success by a fortunate turn in tide and wind. He was not a mere day-dreamer, a theorist, a philosopher, a scholar, although he possessed the gifts of each. He was, rather, a man of action—self-willed, self-reliant, independent—as ambitious as Burr without his slippery ways, and as determined as Hamilton with all his ability to criticise an opponent. Clinton relied not more upon men than upon measures, and in the end the one thing that made him superior to all his contemporaries of the nineteenth century was a never-failing belief in the possibility ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... the pine, the spruce, and the balsam trees, 'will give our gums and our balsam.' The slippery elm offered its bark; the sassafras its roots; the cherry tree its bark and its berries. One after another, the other trees and shrubs offered their berries, their bark, their leaves, or their roots as medicine to heal the diseases ...
— The Magic Speech Flower - or Little Luke and His Animal Friends • Melvin Hix
... fight on with no thought of surrender, for we knew that capture would mean death by walking the plank. Four of the English on our side were killed, besides seven or eight of those of other nationalities, whilst many were wounded. The decks were slippery with blood, and a gathering mist made it impossible to ascertain the extent of our losses. Captain Bland now placed himself beside me, and together we ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes
... were black, cold rooms; and seemed to be in mourning, like the inmates of the house. The books precisely matched as to size, and drawn up in line, like soldiers, looked in their cold, hard, slippery uniforms, as if they had but one idea among them, and that was a freezer. The bookcase, glazed and locked, repudiated all familiarities. Mr Pitt, in bronze, on the top, with no trace of his celestial origin' about him, guarded the unattainable ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... which all our dear-bought advantages (if we could hold them) are mean and contemptible. The noblest island within the tropics, worth all that we possess put together, is, by the vassal Spaniard, delivered into her hands. The island of Hispaniola (of which we have but one poor corner, by a slippery hold) is perhaps equal to England in extent, and in fertility is far superior. The part possessed by Spain, of that great island, made for the seat and centre of a tropical empire, was not improved, to be sure, as the French division had been, ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... close every saloon, he had not closed one single saloon. Aunt Martha Turner and her associates believed this was because Attorney Mullen was himself a drinker of beer, and it was to get proof of this that the hot-headed ladies had engaged a youth named Slippery Williams to make ...
— Philo Gubb Correspondence-School Detective • Ellis Parker Butler
... another case of a similar description only a few blocks away. We go up three narrow flights, steep and dark, for space is as important in a low-class Boston tenement house as in a sardine box. The stairway is slippery from filth on the last flight, for on a small bench at the top, in a dry-goods box, a little boy is raising squabs for the market, and the pigeon business, however much it may help to pay the rent, is not conducive to cleanliness. We find here a suite of ...
— White Slaves • Louis A Banks
... baptised by immersion unless it was proved not well able to endure it, as it says in the rubric or somewhere, so he put it in a tub to try if it could endure it or not, and he let it loose by accident and couldn't catch it again, it was so slippery, just like a horrid little fish, and its mother only came in and got hold of it just in time to prevent its being drowned? So after that he felt he could honestly certify that the child couldn't well endure immersion. I'm getting better at catching Thomas, though. ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... back at once. But—how are you to get over?" she said, contemplating the slippery stones with some dismay. For Jack's fall had displaced more than one of them, and there was now a great gap between the stones in the deepest part of ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... Many of these old and persistent avoidances have been expanded in the development of social relationships until we agree with Mr. Crawley that taboo shows that "man seems to feel that he is treading in slippery places." Might it not be within the range of possibility that in the study of taboo we are groping with man through the first blind ...
— Taboo and Genetics • Melvin Moses Knight, Iva Lowther Peters, and Phyllis Mary Blanchard
... yourself," said the trader, "and don't come it over your master with any o' yer nigger tricks; for I'll take every cent out of him, if you an't thar. If he'd hear to me, he wouldn't trust any on ye—slippery ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... fact, shows the very slippery ground on which the assertion rests, that has lately astonished the weak minds of our Southern cattle-feeding brethren, from the mouth of one of their talented but hasty lecturers—that the potatoe contains ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... sights aboard those ships, either the conqueror or the conquered, would be so pleasant as you suppose. I know what a man-of-war is after a hard-fought battle. The decks strewn with the dead, and slippery with blood and gore, the cockpit full of wounded men, lately strong and hardy, now cripples for life, many dying, entering into eternity, without a hope beyond their ocean grave, Christless, heathens in reality if not in name, stifled groans and sighs, ...
— Adrift in a Boat • W.H.G. Kingston
... the scene grows wilder and grander. Seaward tower the rocky cliffs, falling sheer to their base, jagged slate rocks which are the home of gulls and ravens, with precipitous slopes of short and slippery grass, where the mountain sheep feed; inland the brown moor stretches, bare and open to the sky, with a cluster of little cottages and a grey church hidden and sheltered in a dip of ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... exclaimed, "there must be treachery in this, or yon slippery captain would not so soon be at his flight again, bound as I had bound him." Then uttering a deafening yell, and rushing past Sir Everard, near whom he paused an instant, as if undecided whether he should not ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... grief and fell together in a heap on the slippery floor; but no bones were broken, and there was much good-natured laughter at their expense. If Miss —— (that was) is still among the quick, and remembers, it may interest her to know that that fair-haired English boy's name was no less than ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... try their strength. At that time there were no boats for them to sail on, so they had to swim. After three weeks' swimming, they landed on an island-like place in the sea, to rest. It was smooth and slippery, which made them wonder what it could be. Carancal, accordingly, drew his bolo and thrust it into the island. How fast the island moved after the stroke! It was not really an island, but a very big fish. Fortunately the fish carried ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... in their behavior towards him,—a not very uncommon circumstance,—and though they were careful to keep out of harm's way, they kept near enough to him to annoy him. Finding all efforts to catch one of them fruitless, with the advantage they had,—for 'the wicked stand on slippery places,'—he announced his determination to catch one of them anyhow, and ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... compare carefully the kinds of any tree or shrub of which there are two or three species in the neighborhood, learning to distinguish them without close examination; as the sugar maple, red maple, soft maple, and Norway maple (if it is planted); the white or American elm, the cork elm, the slippery elm, the planted European elms; the aspen, large-toothed poplar, cottonwood, balm of gilead, Carolina poplar, Lombardy poplar; the main species of oaks; the ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey
... round and managed to clamber upon the roof, which was only four feet from the ground. But a brief trial served to convince our young adventurer that it is a good deal easier sliding down a roof than it is climbing up. The shingles being old were slippery, and though the ascent was not steep, Ben found the progress he made was very much like that of a man at the bottom of a well, who is reported as falling back two feet for every three that he ascended. What increased the difficulty of his attempt was that the ...
— Paul Prescott's Charge • Horatio Alger
... upon me in the flattering letter which I had the honour to receive from your Excellency, is enough to set the prudence of an Author on a very slippery eminence. The authority of the quarter it proceeds from, would almost communicate to that sentence the stamp of infallibility, if I could regard it as anything but a mere encouragement of my Muse. More than this a deep feeling ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... hay is slippery, as you know if you have ever tried to climb up a pile of it in a barn. And no sooner was Archie at the top of the mow than down he slid, ...
— The Story of a Stuffed Elephant • Laura Lee Hope
... Parliament, although of English descent, could not so easily reconcile themselves to these rapid changes as their fellows in England had done; in fact, they laid claim to a conscience—a thing seemingly unknown to the English members, or, if known at all, of an exceedingly elastic and slippery nature. Here lay the difficulty: how was it to be overcome? The conversation between Elizabeth and Sussex must have been of a ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... Sam, stop," said Mr. Winkle, trembling violently and clutching hold of Sam's arm with the grasp of a drowning man. "How slippery it is, Sam." ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... davit or crane, we had just to fling ourselves into the sea, and climb up as best we could, carrying a line to haul up our clothing from the boat and other apparatus after landing, while the oarsmen kept her outside the surf. To hold on to the slippery rock we needed but little clothing, anyhow, for it was a slow matter, and the clinging power of one's bare toes was essential. The innumerable gannets sitting on their nests gave the island the appearance of a snowdrift; and we soon had all the eggs that we needed lowered by a line. ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... but for cruel accidents which have almost taken the heart out of them. He is a beef-boner, and that is a dangerous trade, especially when you are on piecework and trying to earn a bride. Your hands are slippery, and your knife is slippery, and you are toiling like mad, when somebody happens to speak to you, or you strike a bone. Then your hand slips up on the blade, and there is a fearful gash. And that would not be so bad, only for the deadly contagion. ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... 'e back, Miss, any hour you like to name," Proud called after her, standing up and fingering the shillings with one hand while with the other he steered the boat's side away from the slippery weed-grown piles. ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... noon, Miss Stuart, clicking along in her narrow-soled, preposterously high-heeled boots, over a polished oaken corridor, as black as ebony, and several degrees more slippery than ice, lost her footing, as might be imagined, and came down, with an unearthly screech, on one ankle. Of course the ankle was sprained; of course every one flew to the rescue. Sir Victor was first on the field, and ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... snow. Lockhart is off in the mail. I hope he will not be blockaded. The day bitter cold. I went to the Court, and with great difficulty returned along the slippery street. I ought to have taken the carriage, but I have a superstitious dread of giving up the habit of walking, and would willingly stick to the last by ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... One of the nurses, as I passed her, was washing a baby-boy. Liking her pleasant face, I stopped to speak to her charge,—a common, bullet-headed, frowning charge enough, laying hold of his own nose with a slippery grasp, and staring very solemnly out of a blanket. The melting of the pleasant face into delighted smiles, as this young gentleman gave an unexpected kick, and laughed at me, was ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... night, while Suzanne was unhooking me, Princess Naia came into my bedroom and asked me some questions, and I told her about the box of instruments and the diary, and the slippery linen papers covered with drawings and German writing, with which I ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... into a brown crumbly band by the traffic, but at either side and on the heaped-up edges of the foot-paths it still lay as white as when it fell. The grey pavement had been cleaned and scraped, but was still dangerously slippery, so that there were fewer passengers than usual. Indeed, from the direction of the Metropolitan Station no one was coming save the single gentleman whose eccentric conduct ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... drum awoke; Onward the bondmen broke; Bayonet and sabre stroke Vainly opposed their rush. Through the wild battle's crush, With but one thought aflush, Driving their lords like chaff, In the guns' mouths they laugh; Or at the slippery brands Leaping with open hands, Down they tear, man and horse, Down in their awful course; Trampling with bloody heel Over the crashing steel, All their eyes forward bent, Rushed the ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... railings of the steamer, still wet from the clinging mist, shone and gleamed and sparkled in the sun like one gigantic diamond. Even the sailors sang as they worked, and one of them went so far as to attempt a sailor's hornpipe on the slippery deck, to the ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... promiscuous rise. With streams of blood the slippery fields are dyed, And slaughtered heroes swell ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... take a rest, old chap. Clara and I can manage.' (She had been on deck most of the time, as capable a hand as you could wish for, better far than I in my present state of exhaustion.) I crawled along the slippery sloping planks ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... sit at my window, sweetheart, I can see the corner of the grape-arbor in your garden. Do you remember the day we sat there, and I read you my story, and you listened, with your great dreaming eyes on the slippery leaf shadows, and your mouth stained with the purple grapes? And when I had finished, you asked me, "Why did Reginald think he had to die, William?" And I told you, "Because he loved Eleanor so much and she loved ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... you her company against her inclination:—perhaps, indeed, she may appear to receive you with some warmth, and you may flatter yourself you have fairly made a canquest of her, and think Dick Worthnought esquire, is out-rival'd; but if so, you are most demnably bit, 'foregad, for she's as slippery as ice, tho' not quite so cold;—she is the very standard of true modern coquetry, the quintessence of the beau-monde, and the completest example of New-York levity, that New-York has the hanor to call its beautiful inhabitant: ha, ha,—she'll ...
— The Politician Out-Witted • Samuel Low
... of the nearest man, in the yellow flicker of the light, the first-comer astride over Howard and still working at the door. Graham turned to the ladder again, and was thrust by his conductor and helped up by those above, and then he was standing on something hard and cold and slippery outside the ventilating funnel. ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... just like some men, are always dirty—you cannot possibly tell why—unproducible to good pic-nic society either in dry or wet weather. In dry, the oozy wretches are weeping among the slippery weeds, infested with eels and powheads. In wet, they are like so many common-sewers, strewn with dead cats and broken crockery, and threatening with their fierce fulzie to pollute the sea. The sweet, soft, pure rains, soon as they touch the flood are changed ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... colonnade of beeches and birches which upheld the green, gold-flecked roof,—the dark tangled spruce thicket, where one must stoop under the interlacing lower branches, dead and brittle, and creep over the soft brown carpet of fallen needles, dry and slippery, in order to reach a little open glade, moist with springs, where the red wood-lily and the purple-fringed orchid grew,—the high steep rock that jutted out from the woods about half-way up the slope of the Dome, as if to make a narrow ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... expedition. But opening his umbrella the latter went without a word into the damp and sodden garden, which was dark as a cellar. The wind was roaring and tossing the bare tree-tops. The little sandy paths were wet and slippery. Alexey Yegoryvitch walked along as he was, bareheaded, in his swallow-tail coat, lighting up the path for about three steps before ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... ulsters, they were soon on the slippery deck of the yacht, the storm beating in their faces. The man in the wheelhouse, encased in heavy oilskins, was nodding in the shelter of his little quarters. He started up as Mr. Ronald and his friend ...
— Dorothy's Triumph • Evelyn Raymond
... human on the frozen hills. He heard the deep behind him, and a cry Before. His own thought drove him like a goad. Dry clash'd his harness in the icy caves And barren chasms, and all to left and right The bare black cliff clang'd round him, as he based His feet on juts of slippery crag that rang Sharp-smitten with the dint of armed heels— And on a sudden, lo! the level lake, And the long ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... sagacity and energy in business which seemed to be hereditary in his family. One of the first things he did on arriving at man's estate was to set on foot a scheme for throwing a bridge across the Severn at Coalbrookdale, at a point where the banks were steep and slippery, to accommodate the large population which had sprung up along both banks of the river. There were now thriving iron, brick, and pottery works established in the parishes of Madeley and Broseley; and the old ferry on the Severn was found altogether inadequate ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... man so gaily hopeful, so expansively promising that I could hardly believe he was not an Italian, said that there could not possibly be a bull-fight that day; the rain would have made the arena so slippery that man, horse, and bull would all fall down together in a common ruin, with no hope whatever of ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... they passed their general. Their rifles went up in salute as straight and accurately as if they had just come from quarters and were marching over a level parade ground, instead of over fields filled with shell holes and slippery with mud—or perhaps ...
— A Journey Through France in War Time • Joseph G. Butler, Jr.
... certain stored-up intelligences, and memoirs to be constant and habitual impressions, and having wholly fixed the sciences, as having stability and firmness, they presently place under them a basis and seat of a slippery substance, easy to be dissipated and in ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... surely implant in them some sense of duty. At present, so long as a servant is not absolutely dishonest, her conscience rarely troubles her. This is especially the case with our cooks, who also—that 'dripping' question making their path so slippery—draw the line between honesty and its contrary ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... so we determine to halt, for here, pure, bubbling from a dark green slippery rock, is a spring of water as clear as crystal and deliciously cool. What a treat for our horses and dogs! What ...
— Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure • Gordon Stables
... to enjoy this panorama we began the descent on the Castel-Mouly side, and were very soon forced to make short and sometimes slippery cuts, to avoid the banks of snow lying in the path. We easily managed to strike the proper path again, however, and soon found ourselves at our "luncheon plateau." We now bore along to the left, finding ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough
... did go home 'riderless' eventually," said Katherine, rubbing her bumped elbow. "Didn't he make speed going around that narrow, slippery ledge, though?" she went on. "I expected him to go overboard every minute. But he tore along as easily as if he were ...
— The Campfire Girls on Ellen's Isle - The Trail of the Seven Cedars • Hildegard G. Frey
... replied Cromwell. "Still you were not to blame, for who can reason with a bull in his own yard? Well, while I have power I'll not forget your faithfulness, though in truth, my Lady of Blossholme, I sit upon a slippery height, and beneath waits a gulf that has swallowed some as great, and greater. Therefore I will not deny it, I lay by while I may, not knowing who ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard
... it, some o' these days he'll wheedle his men back wi' fair promises; that they'll just get cheated out of as soon as they're in his power again. He'll work his fines well out on 'em, I'll warrant. He's as slippery as an eel, he is. He's like a cat,—as sleek, and cunning, and fierce. It'll never be an honest up and down fight wi' him, as it will be wi' Thornton. Thornton's as dour as a door-nail; an obstinate chap, every inch on him,—th' ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... traversing the narrow ledges cut around the sides of a precipitous trail, or crossing a narrow natural bridge spanning the frightful gorges found everywhere in the mountains, a mule will be incontinently thrown off the slippery path, and fall hundreds of feet into the yawning canyon below. Generally instant death is their portion, though I recall an instance, while on an expedition against the hostile Indians thirty years ago, where a number of mules of our pack-train, loaded ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... I was washing him, I was. And he was that slippery with the soap that he slid through me fingers and down to the ...
— The White Christmas and other Merry Christmas Plays • Walter Ben Hare
... would take place here; and set to work a little battalion of men under his own eye. They erected greasy-poles for climbing, with smoked hams and local cheeses at the top. They placed hurdles in rows for jumping over; across the river they laid a slippery pole, with a live pig of the neighbourhood tied at the other end, to become the property of the man who could walk over and get it. There were also provided wheelbarrows for racing, donkeys for the same, a stage for boxing, wrestling, and drawing blood generally; sacks for jumping in. Moreover, ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... been iron passing through his soul, and besides he felt as if everything was turning cold and slippery and gliding from his hand. He shivered with vague fears, and wished the sun would set at one o'clock and the sorrowful day come to ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... from the north-east. The ashen cliffs of Dover came to meet the packet reluctant and inhospitable. By the harbour-entrance, a petulant squall of rain beat upon them as though to shoo them away. The landing-stage was slippery and slimy with rain, soot, and petrol drippings from the motor-cars shipped to and fro. Customs-house officers eyed them with tired suspicion; porters took their money and hastened away with the curtest of acknowledgments; an engine panted sullenly as it waited for never-ending ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... room was covered with slippery purple chintz. It was a high lounge and very narrow. There was nothing at the end to hold the pillow in its place; so the pillow constantly tumbled off and jerked Elsie's head suddenly backward, which was not at all comfortable. Worse,—Elsie ...
— What Katy Did At School • Susan Coolidge
... ways of agriculture, never having seen corn except as packing straw and in quartern loaves; for this, on the other hand, it comprehends the mysterious habits of fire and pure, sterile earth; for this it lives crammed together in slippery streets where the housewife must change white window-curtains at least once a fortnight if she wishes to remain respectable; for this it gets up in the mass at six a.m., winter and summer, and goes to bed when the public-houses close; for this it exists—that you ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... thinking," continued the sub-editor, "we may as well keep the printing-office door locked to-day. That slippery gentleman with the watery eyes meant business, or I am very much mistaken. I'll just send upstairs for Bander to go on duty at the shop door to-day as well as to-morrow; I think we shall have ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... more to ride up there with you?" she asked. "It's so slippery and shiny down here, and the stage is so much too big for me, that I rattle round in it till I'm 'most black and blue. And the windows are so small I can only see pieces of things, and I've 'most broken my neck stretching round to find out whether my trunk has fallen off the back. It's my mother's ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... they were crossing the Guadarama mountains in the winter of 1808. Ah! yes, it was very bad, for they were fine men and fine horses. It is strange to see men blown by the wind over the precipices, but the ground was so slippery and there was nothing to which they could hold. So companies all linked arms, and they did better in that fashion; but one artilleryman's hand came off as I held it, for he had had the frost-bite ...
— The Great Shadow and Other Napoleonic Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... nulla. Mayne got safely to the other side, but my horse stumbled and rolled over with me into the water at the bottom. In the fall my hand was slightly cut by my sword, which I had drawn, thinking we might have to fight for our lives; the blood flowed freely, and made the reins so slippery when I tried to remount, that it was with considerable difficulty I got into the saddle. The enemy were already at the edge of the nulla, and preparing to fire, so there was no time to be lost. I struggled through the water and up the opposite ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... follow her. Breaking his bonds by the power of God, he became not only a temperance man, but a Christian, and in his great joy and gratitude for his own salvation was filled with a desire to warn and rescue others, whose feet were treading the same slippery paths. He then began holding Gospel Temperance Meetings, as he had opportunity in many places mostly within the County of Brome. This county has long held an honored position as being one of the leading temperance counties in the Dominion of Canada, because during many ...
— The Story of a Dark Plot - or Tyranny on the Frontier • A.L.O. C. and W.W. Smith
... Haynes paused. 'I don't quite understand, Letitia. How was the maid at fault?' 'Why, as far as I can make out, there was a stair-rod missing, and she never mentioned it, and the poor archdeacon set his foot quite on the edge of the step—you know how slippery that oak is—and it seems he must have fallen almost the whole flight and broken his neck. It is so sad for poor Miss Pulteney. Of course, they will get rid of the girl at once. I never liked her.' Miss Haynes's grief resumed its sway, but eventually relaxed so far ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary - Part 2: More Ghost Stories • Montague Rhodes James
... not in kings Their favour is but slippery; worse than that, It costs one dear, and errors such as these Full oft bring shame ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... her lover again. So she was given three large needles, a plough-wheel, and three nuts, which she was to take great care of. She set out with these things, and when she came to the glass mountain which was so slippery she stuck the three needles behind her feet and then in front, and so got over it, and when she was on the other side put ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Leonora Blanche Alleyne Lang
... children's fairy play. She was delighted. They had never been to a theatre at all, and were waiting for me one afternoon outside the hospital gates, very clean and smiling, and absolutely dancing with excitement. I was of course on crutches, and as it was a greasy, slippery day, looked about for a taxi. It was hopeless, and without a word the elder child ran off to get one. The way she nipped in and out of the traffic was positively terrifying, but she returned triumphant in the short space of five minutes, and we were soon ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp
... in "Rheingold" to which reference has just been made, the ugly Nibelung Alberich appears presently and tries to catch one of the lovely maidens. But they elude his grasp and he angrily complains that he slips and slides on the slimy soil. Note the slippery character of these sounds: ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... different from "Pingueico." Here we entered by a level opening and walked down most of the two thousand feet, much of it by narrow, slimy, slippery, stone steps, in some places entirely worn away by the bare feet of the many generations of peons that as slaves to the Spaniards of colonial days used to carry the ore up on their backs from the very bottom of the mine. "Peregrina" mountain was almost another Mammoth Cave, so enormous are ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... believe in getting in the bones of a picture properly first, then putting on the flesh and afterwards the skin, and then another skin; last of all combing its hair and sending it forth to the world. If you begin with the flesh and the skin and trust to getting the bones right afterwards, it's such a slippery process. ...
— The Mind of the Artist - Thoughts and Sayings of Painters and Sculptors on Their Art • Various
... in disgrace. That is the traditional way with angry mistresses, I know; but Mrs. Kinloch was not one of the common sort. She did not know Talleyrand's maxim,—"Never act from first impulses, for they are always—right!" Indeed, I doubt if she had ever heard of that slippery Frenchman; but observation and experience had led her to adopt a similar line ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... said, the slippery creatures seem to be all around them, coiling about the horses' legs, brushing against their bellies, at intervals using the powerful, though invisible, weapon with which Nature has provided them; while the scared quadrupeds, instead of dashing onward to get clear of ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... rushed so wantonly to perdition. Nick had for the hour seriously wished to keep hold of him: he valued him as a salutary influence. Yet on coming to his senses after his election our young man had recognised that Nash might very well have reflected on the thanklessness of such a slippery subject—might have held himself released from his vows. Of course it had been particularly in the event of a Liberal triumph that he had threatened to make himself felt; the effect of a brand plucked from the burning would be so much greater if the flames ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... who come out here, and whom one knows nothing about, are now and again slippery fish," gruffly spoke the brown-faced ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... Savior "in its worst form,"[A] without extorting from his lips a syllable of rebuke. "The sacred writers did not condemn it."[B] And why should they? By a definition[C] sufficiently ambiguous and slippery, he undertakes to set forth a form of slavery which he looks upon as consistent with the law of Righteousness. From this definition he infers that the abolitionists are greatly to blame for maintaining that American slavery is inherently ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... sufficient water since we arrived here. It is wonderful how in such a rocky region so little water appears to exist. The surface water was rather difficult for the horses to reach, as it lay upon the extreme summit of the rock, the sides of which were very steep and slippery. There were plenty of small birds; hawks and crows, a species of cockatoo, some pigeons, and eagles soaring high above. More seeds were planted here, the soil being very good. Upon the opposite or eastern side of this rock was a large ledge or cave, under which the Troglodytes of these realms had ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... found widely scattered among the barefoot mountain tribes of northern Luzon. The people say it is due to mountain climbing, and their explanation is probably correct, as the great toe is used much as is a claw in securing a footing on the slippery, steep trails during the rainy reason. Fa'-wing occurs quite as commonly with women as with men, and in Ambuklao, Benguet Province, I saw a boy of 8 or 9 years whose great toes were spread half as much as those shown in Pl. XXV. This ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... This is a handwriting I don't know, but it's smart stationery—and, dear me, look at all these little cards. I really don't see how the postman bothers to see that they're all delivered; they're such little slippery things—more ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... of a sleek, slippery man sliding cards out of a faro-box looked at the Westerner curiously. Among the suckers who came to this den of thieves to be robbed were none of Clay's stamp. Lindsay watched the white, dexterous hands of the dealer with an honest distaste. All along the border ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... Winkle, trembling violently, and clutching hold of Sam's arms with the grasp of a drowning man. 'How slippery it is, Sam!' ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... if such a thing could be. I cried for mercy, and called for mother, who was out at one of the neighbor's. Had she been at home, I am sure she would have interceded for me. But he kept on and on, his face as white as the wall. I could feel something wet running down my back, and my face was slippery with blood, when I put up my hand to protect it. I thought I should die; everything began to go round and round. The strokes did not hurt any longer; I could not feel them now. The hall suddenly grew dark, and I sank upon the floor. ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... a dissenting voice. A ditch in the mud, that was all, no matter how much farther we went. So we passed out of the trench into a soapy, slippery mud which had been ploughed ground in the autumn, now become lathery with the beat of men's steps. Our party became separated when some foundered and tried to hoist themselves with both boot-straps at once. The CO. called out in order to locate us ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... tongue than from the shoulder; nevertheless, to do as above is, to my ignorance, very good work, if you can be sure to do it. Not one word do I believe of Robin Hood splitting peeled wands at seven-score yards, and such like. Whoever wrote such stories knew not how slippery a peeled wand is, even if one could hit it, and how it gives to the onset. Now, let him stick one in the ground, and take his bow and arrow at it, ten yards away, or ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... from the smallness of the windows, partly from the dark carved wood that was everywhere, on floor and walls and ceilings. I could never be at home, I thought, in such a place; though I never found elsewhere such a fine quality of floor; smooth in the perfect degree, yet not too slippery for firm treading, and springing to the foot in a way that was next to dance music for suggestion. I said as much to Yvon, and he caught the idea flying, as was his way, and ran to bring his sister, bidding me get my fiddle on the instant. We were in a long hall, rather narrow, but with excellent ...
— Rosin the Beau • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... went beyond the limit, however. He had found a pail of soft-soap in the shed and while the crowd was out of the barn, playing a "round game" in the yard while it was being swept, Pete slunk in with the soap and a swab, and managed to spread a good deal of the slippery ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd
... the cord. But as the brushwood on the banks will not permit us to walk on shore, we are under the necessity of wading through the river as we drag the boats. This soon makes our feet tender, and sometimes occasions severe falls over the slippery stones; and the men by being constantly wet are becoming more feeble. In the course of the day the hunters killed two deer, some geese and ducks, and the party saw antelopes, cranes, ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... was following a game trail along a very steep bank which ended a hundred feet below in a granite precipice. It had been raining and snowing in a fitful fashion, and the clay ground was slippery, making a most treacherous footing. One of the pack animals just ahead of my horse slipped, fell to his knees, the heavy pack overbalanced him, and away he rolled over and over down the slope, to be stopped from the precipice only ...
— A Woman Tenderfoot • Grace Gallatin Seton-Thompson
... the plasmodium has about the consistency of the white of an egg; is slippery to the touch, tasteless, and odorless. Plasmodia vary in color in different species and at different times in the same species. The prevailing color is yellow, but may be brown, orange, red, ruby-red, violet, in fact ...
— The North American Slime-Moulds • Thomas H. (Thomas Huston) MacBride
... for gardening. Edith was terribly frightened at the three men as well as at the one who had gone into the shop. She was sure that they wished to do her harm. So she turned and ran up the mountain by the steep, slippery path and the narrow, rotten wooden steps which ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof
... geranium and fuschia. By shady young orange trees, covered with fruit and blossom, between rows of trellissed vines, bearing rich promise of a purple vintage. Among fig trees and pomegranates, and so leaving the garden, along the dry slippery grass, towards the hoarse rushing river, both silent till they reached it. There is ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... the Greek [Greek: zytos], which signifies scraped; it was the place where the Wrestlers exercised; it was so called because they made their skins be scraped and rubbed smooth, to make the Sweat fall, and to make their Bodies more slippery, that their Adversaries might have the less hold ...
— An Abridgment of the Architecture of Vitruvius - Containing a System of the Whole Works of that Author • Vitruvius
... straggling old village they rode, stabled their bicycles, and went down to the shining evening sands, where now the paved causeway to the Mount was all exposed, running slimy and seaweedy between rippled wet sands and dark, slippery rocks. Bare-footed they trod it, Gerda and Kay in front, Barry and Nan behind, and the gulls talking ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... weather proved unkind on Wednesday. In the middle of the forenoon the wind veered around to the south and a drizzle of rain set in. By three o'clock the drizzle had grown into a very respectable downpour and the gridiron was slow and slippery. But Mr. Robey was not to be deterred and, with Danny Moore anxiously hovering about like a hen with a batch of ducklings, the 'varsity was put through a half-hour of signal work, punting and catching. Then the second, wet and muddy, came across to the ...
— Left End Edwards • Ralph Henry Barbour
... sat Grumsquutzy, in his robes of office and surrounded by an armed guard. At a little distance stood two great black slaves, each bearing a scourge of thongs. All about them the floor was slippery with blood. While I wondered at all this two policemen entered, having between them one whom I recognized as a professional Friend of the People, a great orator, keenly concerned for the interests of Labor. Shown the inscription and ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... friezejacketed Buerschen, Grisons bears, rejoicing in their exercise, exhilarated with the tingling noise of beaten metal. We reached the first room safely, guided by firm-footed Christian, whose one candle just defined the rough walls and the slippery steps. There we found a band of boys, pulling ropes that set the bells in motion. But our destination was not reached. One more aerial ladder, perpendicular in darkness, brought us swiftly to the ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... I'm on that, let me warn you about Alex Tracy, four miles north and a half mile east, on the west side of the road. He's a slippery cuss and you'll have to ...
— Dust • Mr. and Mrs. Haldeman-Julius
... night had frozen as it fell, and, by that simple magic, had wrought wonders. The trees were hung with diamonds and many-colored gems; the houses were overlaid with silver, and the streets paved with slippery brightness; a frigid glory was flung over all familiar things, from the cottage chimney to the steeple of the meeting-house, that gleamed upward to the sky. This living world, where we sit by our firesides, or go forth to meet beings ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... sense, all else upon demand Would come of course, and did, we understand. His neighbour hermit came to him to say, 'Am I awake? Is this no dream, I pray? You favourite! you great! Beware of kings, Their favours are but slippery things, Dear-bought; to mount the heights to which they call Is but to court a more illustrious fall. You little know to what this lure beguiles. My friend, I say, Beware!' The other smiles. The hermit adds, 'See how The court has marr'd your wisdom even now! That purblind ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine |
