"Snail" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hours, it would have gone a thousand feet, that is 300 braccia, which is the sixth of a mile. Whence it would follow that the course of the sun during the day would be the sixth part of a mile and that this venerable snail, the sun will have travelled ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... soothe him. But the Colonel clamoured to the heavens. Kennaston he qualified in various ways. And as for Dr. Jeal, he would hold him responsible—"personally, sir"—for the consequences of his dawdling in this fashion—"Damme, sir, like a damn' snail with ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... theory of the production of the human race from the mud, through the mushroom, the snail, the tortoise, the greyhound, the monkey and the man, which is now such a favorite with atheists, if it were fully proved to be a fact, would only increase the difficulty of getting rid of God. For either the primeval mud had all the germs of the future plants and monkeys, and men's bodies ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... the mansion inhabited by the man who received an annual income of two hundred thousand roubles; for he thought to discern therefrom the nature of its proprietor, even as from a shell one may deduce the species of oyster or snail which has been its tenant, and has left therein its impression. But no such conclusions were to be drawn. The rooms were simple, and even bare. Not a fresco nor a picture nor a bronze nor a flower nor a china what-not nor a book was ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... shells, grit, and even opercula a quarter of an inch in diameter. In weight, size, and number of its constituents this exterior armour is altogether disproportionate to the extreme tenuity of its foundation. Too unsubstantial to sustain its own weight, it sprawls, like the track of a tipsy snail, indeterminately, slowly developing its sinuosities over the irregular surface of a rock, and slightly adherent thereto, throughout its whole length. Of this there seem to be several nicely shaded grades, some in the ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... me your lance, good man, and stick the point Here in the ground, and then the roof will be Held up in that direction. Thus it throws A broader shadow. Quickly, now! That's right! You other fellow, like a snail, you bear Your house upon your back, unless, perhaps, A house for some one else. Show me the shield! A mirror 'tis, in sooth! 'Tis crude, of course, As all is, here, but in a ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... cousin, as AEsop telleth in a fable that the snail did. For when Jupiter (whom the poets feign for the great god) invited all the poor worms of the earth unto a great solemn feast that it pleased him upon a time—I have forgotten upon what occasion—to prepare for them, the snail kept her ...
— Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation - With Modifications To Obsolete Language By Monica Stevens • Thomas More
... barely excepted, for whose life his sister cared. He charged her of never having forgiven Hilary for making Anna godmother of their flag, and of being in some dark league against him—"hell only knew what"—along with that snail of a cousin whom everybody but Kincaid himself and the silly old uncle knew to be the fallen man's most venomous foe. Throughout the storm the grandmother's fingers pattered soothing caresses, while Flora stood as unruffled by his true surmises as by any, a look of ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... even glassier quality than usual. His eyes were by nature a trifle prominent; and to Aline, in the overstrung condition in which her talk with George Emerson had left her, they seemed to bulge at her like a snail's. A man seldom looks his best in bed, and to Aline, seeing him for the first time at this disadvantage, the Honorable Freddie seemed quite repulsive. It was with a feeling of positive panic that she wondered whether he would want her to ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... slow gray slug and snail have trailed Their slimy silver up and down The beds where once the moss-rose veiled Rich beauty; and the mushroom brown Swells where the lily ...
— Weeds by the Wall - Verses • Madison J. Cawein
... the gluttonous kern had not wrought me a snail's own wrong!" Then he sounded, and down came kinsmen and clansmen all: "Ten blows, for ten tine, on his back let fall, And reckon no stroke if the blood follow not at the bite ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... disobey me?" asked Benassis. "I shall not bring you any more rice pudding nor snail broth! No more fresh dates and white bread for you! So you want to die and break your poor mother's heart, ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... roadside ditch or pool in springtime, take from it any bit of stick or straw which has lain undisturbed for a time. Some little worm-shaped masses of clear jelly containing specks are fastened to the stick: eggs of a small snail-like shell-fish. One of these specks magnified proves to be a crystalline sphere with an opaque mass in its centre. And while you are looking, the opaque mass begins to stir, and by-and-by slowly to turn upon its axis like a forming planet,—life beginning in the microcosm, as in the great worlds ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... while since; Hark, now I push its wicket, the moss Hinders the hinges and makes them wince! She must have reached this shrub ere she turned, 5 As back with that murmur the wicket swung; For she laid the poor snail, my chance foot spurned, To feed and ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... in great danger for many days, and Mary crept about the house in the most forlorn manner, for no one took any notice of her, and she dared not go out in the garden, for fear still of meeting some mighty monster of a snail, or something equally alarming. At length Mrs. Wilson grew better, and then she sent for Mary to her room, and talked to her very kindly and very wisely on the folly of fearing things which had not the power to hurt ...
— The Bad Family and Other Stories • Mrs. Fenwick
... in Amboise as Notre Dame in Paris, and from the warmth of his reception La Mothe guessed shrewdly that his coming was expected. Innkeepers were not prone to lavish welcomes on wandering minstrels who carried all their world's gear on their back like any snail. For such light-hearted folk an open window at night was an easier method of payment than ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... do you think that every heavy-heeled professor will have heaven? What, every lazy one? every wanton and foolish professor, that will be stopt by anything, kept back by anything, that scarce runneth so fast heavenward as a snail creepeth on the ground? Nay, there are some professors that do not go on so fast in the way of God as a snail doth go on the wall; and yet these think that heaven and happiness is for them. But stay, there are many more that run than there ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Vol. 2 (of 10) • Grenville Kleiser
... have come off there and then, all by himself: he would, Mr. Galloway, as I am a living sinner!" she hotly continued. "It's unbeknown how he'd have got here—holding on by the wall, like a snail, or fastening himself on to the tail of a cart; but try at it, in some way, he would! Be quiet, Jenkins! How dare you attempt ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... bank, paddled out past the first point to the north, and pillowing her head on a cushioned thwart, gave herself up to dreamy contemplation on the sky. There was scarce a ripple on the lake. A faint breath of an offshore breeze fanned her, drifting the canoe at a snail's pace out from land. Stella luxuriated in the quiet afternoon. A party of campers cruising the lake had tarried at the bungalow till after midnight. Jack Fyfe had risen at dawn to depart for some distant ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... shining star, made of the delicate gold-shells. That was Daddy's present to her on her last birthday. Dear Daddy! There, sitting in the corner, was Mrs. Neptune, the doll which Captain January had carved out of a piece of fine wood that had drifted ashore after a storm. Her eyes were tiny black snail-shells, her hair was of brown sea-moss, very thick and soft ("though as for combing it," said Star, "it is im-possible!"), and a smooth pink shell was set in either cheek, "to make a blush." Mrs. Neptune was somewhat battered, as ...
— Captain January • Laura E. Richards
... twisting their way, the lads managed to plod on through the dense crowd at a snail's pace. Ahead of them, however, Hal could see that the fugitive was making about the same progress. His hopes rose, and he called over ...
— The Boy Allies in Great Peril • Clair W. Hayes
... investigated the space beneath her bed, a light brass affair, hung with a chintz valance; had then peered beneath the dark recess of the dressing-case, and having looked in the deep drawer of the bureau and into the closet, she fastened her door and felt as secure as a snail in a shell. As she never, in this particular business, seemed to have any confidence in Mr. Laughton, in spite of the fact that she admired him and adored him, neither his presence nor his absence ever made any variation in the performance. She had ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various
... that includes all the structural possibilities of that division of the Animal Kingdom,—without recalling to my readers a Polyp or a Jelly-Fish, a Sea-Urchin or a Star-Fish. Neither can I present the structural elements of the Mollusk plan, without reminding them of an Oyster or a Clam, a Snail or a Cuttle-Fish,—or of the Articulate plan, without calling up at once the form of a Worm, a Lobster, or an Insect,—or of the Vertebrate plan, without giving it the special character of Fish, Reptile, Bird, or Mammal. Yet I insist that all living beings are but the different modes of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... a system equally conchological. He found that the social action in every part of the island was regulated and assisted by this process. Oyster-shells were first introduced; muscle-shells speedily followed; and, as commerce became more complicate, they had even been obliged to have recourse to snail-shells. Popanilla retired to rest with admiration of the people who thus converted to the most useful purposes things apparently so useless. There was no saying now what might not be done even with a nutshell. It was evident ...
— The Voyage of Captain Popanilla • Benjamin Disraeli
... the part of the internal ear directly concerned in hearing. It consists of a coiled tube which makes two and one half turns around a central axis and bears a close resemblance to a snail shell (Figs. 151 and 152). It differs in plan from a snail shell, however, in that its interior space is divided into three distinct channels, or canals. These lie side by side and are named, from their relations to other parts, the scala ...
— Physiology and Hygiene for Secondary Schools • Francis M. Walters, A.M.
... exposed to the glare of the headlight and wave his arms. David sprang between the rails and gesticulated wildly. But in amazement his arms fell to his sides. For the train, now only a hundred yards distant and creeping toward him at a snail's pace, carried no head-light, and though in the moonlight David was plainly visible, it blew no whistle, tolled no bell. Even the passenger coaches in the rear of the sightless engine were wrapped in darkness. It was a ghost of a train, a Flying Dutchman of a train, a nightmare of a train. ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... it make to me who he belongs to? I don't care if he belongs to Vanderbilt, or Aster'ses family. Principle—that is what I am a workin' on; and the same principle that would hender me from buyin' a feller that was poor as a snail, would hender me from buyin' one that had the riches of Creshus; it wouldn't make a mite of difference ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... they passed the day, with strolling about, halting to look at an old tiled roof, a broken iron gate, a wrought iron balcony, a snail-covered garden wall; and when evening was come they went to a hotel to rest; but no sooner had night fallen than they went out again to ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... spring, And day's at the morn; Morning's at seven; The hillside's dew-pearled; The lark's on the wing; The snail's on the thorn; God's in His heaven— All's right ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various
... was made cavernous by thick-planted paper-mulberry and maple trees, while a line of cherry-trees and an old pole-well rose along the road and hedge. As they rode to the rear of the house a little dormer window, like a snail, crawled low along the roof, and a light ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... to call that evening, and when he had heard what had happened he whistled a good deal. "You are a funny kind of a fellow," said he. "You go courting like a snail, with your house ...
— The Magic Egg and Other Stories • Frank Stockton
... the Hudson until the 4th of December, moving snail-like, although he knew that Washington's army was ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... over. One of the door-posts snapped, the other sloped inwards, the roof collapsed, the sides went in, the ice passed over all, and the hut of Peegwish was finally obliterated from off the face of the earth. So, a giant with his foot might slowly and effectually crush the mansion of a snail! ...
— The Red Man's Revenge - A Tale of The Red River Flood • R.M. Ballantyne
... more coal. The hunters, in the forward part of the car, exchanged remarks now and then: the rest of us read newspapers and looked out of the windows at the monotonous winter landscape. Wondering at the snail's pace at which we moved, I recalled the landlord's mysterious jokes, and at last ventured to ask the little milliner, who sat in the next seat to mine, what he meant by his allusions. "Oh, it was nothing," she replied; "only ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... length the snail doth clime the highest tops, Ascending up the stately castle walls; At length the water with continual drops, Doth penetrate the hardest marble stone; At length we are arrived in Albion. Nor could the barbarous Dacian sovereign, Nor yet the ruler of ...
— 2. Mucedorus • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... troubles me more near Than Buckingham and his rash-levied strength. Come,—I have learn'd that fearful commenting Is leaden servitor to dull delay; Delay leads impotent and snail-pac'd beggary: Then fiery expedition be my wing, Jove's Mercury, and herald for a king! Go, muster men: my counsel is my shield; We must be brief when ...
— The Life and Death of King Richard III • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... come not here; Hence, you long-leg'd spinners, hence: Beetles black approach not near, Worm nor snail do no offence. ...
— A Fairy Tale in Two Acts Taken from Shakespeare (1763) • William Shakespeare
... quadrupeds were the only other sounds audible. I waited deferentially for the great antiquarian, scientist and courtier to resume, amusing myself meantime by turning over the leaves of an official report by the Minister of War on a new and improved process of making thunder from snail ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... body to maturity. Thus the granulations of new flesh to repair the injuries of wounds are visible to the eye; as well as the callous matter, which cements broken bones; the calcareous matter, which repairs injured snail-shells; and the threads, which are formed by silk-worms and spiders; which are all secreted in a softer state, and harden by exsiccation, or by the contact of the air, or by absorption ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... arroyo—rose-quartz arrow heads, notched like saws; an old, rusted Colt's revolver, bearing the date 1858, and a picture of the holding up of a stagecoach engraved around the chamber; queer, tiny shells of some long gone fresh-water snail; bits of yellow pottery, their edges worn smooth and round by the water; to say nothing of birds' nests, villages of ugly water-white scorpions; and lizards, from the tiny ones that change their color, chameleonlike, to "racers" well over a ...
— The New Boy at Hilltop • Ralph Henry Barbour
... roared like a Lion, She dived like a Whale, She swam like a Goose, She crawled like a Snail—Oh yes! ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... tell you!" broke in Sam. "I've seen him more then once, riding along, that is some time ago, 'fore I was knocked out. But when I tried to come up to him he'd vanish. And to look at it you wouldn't think that cayuse of his was any quicker'n a snail!" ...
— The Boy Ranchers in Death Valley - or Diamond X and the Poison Mystery • Willard F. Baker
... see the lands about her as successive sweeps of open country, cold under the moon, coarsely patched and seamed with thin rows and heavy clumps of trees. To her right, half a mile down the river, which trailed away behind the light like the shiny, slimy path of a snail, winked the scattered lights of Marietta. Not two hundred yards away at the end of the bridge squatted the station, marked by a sullen lantern. The oppression was lifted now—the tree-tops below her were rocking the young starlight to a haunted doze. She stretched out ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... animals and plants. As, for example, among the plants, we take a yeast plant, a Protococcus, a common mould, a Chara, a fern, and some flowering plant; among animals we examine such things as an Amoeba, a Vorticella, and a fresh-water polype. We dissect a star-fish, an earth-worm, a snail, a squid, and a fresh-water mussel. We examine a lobster and a cray-fish, and a black beetle. We go on to a common skate, a cod-fish, a frog, a tortoise, a pigeon, and a rabbit, and that takes us about all the time we have to give. The purpose of this course is not to make skilled dissectors, ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... still evenings you get in the summer, when you can hear a snail clear its throat a mile away. The sun was sinking over the hills and the gnats were fooling about all over the place, and everything smelled rather topping—what with the falling dew and so on—and I was just beginning to feel a little soothed by the peace ...
— A Wodehouse Miscellany - Articles & Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... There is nothing that makes a man so down-hearted in his work of self-improvement as the constant and bitter experience that it seems to be all of no use; that he is making so little progress; that with immense pains, like a snail creeping up a wall, he gets up, perhaps, an inch or two, and then all at once he drops down, and further down than he was before ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... with envy, but one between whose word and whose deed there gapes a disparity even wider and deeper than the disparity which divides the word from the deed of the man of winter, of the man who, though he be as tardy as a snail, at least is making some way in the world, in contradistinction from the failure who revolves ever in a single spot, like some barren old maid before the ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... "A snail, sir," repeated the youth. "I've got a book on natural history, and I've just been reading about them. I saw this one as I was passing, and I went inside to study its habits. They are very interesting little things ...
— Salthaven • W. W. Jacobs
... and a time that is still far off. Their course is related to that of ordinary works as the orbit of Uranus to the orbit of Mercury. For the moment they get no justice done to them. People are at a loss how to treat them; so they leave them alone, and go their own snail's pace for themselves. Does the worm see the ...
— The Art of Literature • Arthur Schopenhauer
... like that Nick shrank back like a snail into its shell. He was not too young to know that there were worse things than to be locked in Gaston Carew's house. It were better to be a safe-kept prisoner there than to be lost in the sinks of London. And so, knowing this, he made the ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... yard, the grand western front rising in front of them, and the buildings of St. Swithun's Abbey extending far to their right. The hour was nearly noon, and the space was deserted, except for an old woman sitting at the great western doorway with a basket of rosaries made of nuts and of snail shells, and a workman or two employed on the ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... them as the centre, but still imagine more favorable positions and relations than the actual ones, and so we get no valuable report from them at all. In his Italian Travels Goethe jogs along at a snail's pace, but always mindful that the earth is beneath and the heavens are above him. His Italy is not merely the fatherland of lazzaroni and virtuosi, and scene of splendid ruins, but a solid turf-clad soil, daily shined on by the sun, and nightly by the moon. Even the few showers ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... 361 when S. Hilary had returned from exile to his bishopric and to his wife and daughter. He had been living the eremitic life on the isle of Gallinaria, shaped so like a snail, off the coast of Albenga, and had nearly poisoned himself with trying to eat hellebore leaves. On reaching Poitiers, he told his old friend the Bishop, that he desired to follow the monastic life in his diocese, ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... coach, drawn by six small mice. This made the Queen angry, because she had not a new coach too; therefore, resolving to ruin Tom, she complained to the King that he had behaved very insolently to her. The King sent for him in a rage. Tom, to escape his fury, crept into a large, empty snail-shell, and there lay for some time, when, peeping out of the shell, he saw a fine butterfly on the ground. He ventured forth and got astride the butterfly, which took wing, and mounted into the ...
— The History Of Tom Thumb and Other Stories. • Anonymous
... been crucified more than fifteen hundred years before the audience had been created; and although "Old Neb" of Babylon had destroyed a million of Hebrews several hundred years previous to the birth of the Bethlehem "Savior of Mankind," the "frog" and "snail" eaters of France were still breaking their lungs and throats in cheering for ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... the carbonic acid gas caused the separation of an equivalent quantity of insoluble carbonate of lime, which, layer by layer, built up the mound. A fragment of the rock which I possess contains leaves, twigs, hazel nuts, and snail shells, which, falling from time to time upon it, were incrusted and finally imprisoned in ...
— Saratoga and How to See It • R. F. Dearborn
... loiterers. The shop windows were as full as ever, the toilettes of the women as wonderful. Mankind, though khaki-clad, was plentiful. The narrow thoroughfare was so crowded that his taxicab went only at a snail's crawl, and occasionally he heard scraps of conversation. Two pretty girls were talking to two young men ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... brown; Who with him the Wasp, his companion, did bring, But they promised that evening to lay by their sting. Then the shy little Dormouse peeped out of his hole, And led to the feast his blind cousin, the Mole; And the Snail, with her horns peeping out of her shell, Came, fatigued with the distance, the length of an ell. A mushroom the table; and on it was spread A water-dock leaf, which their table-d'hote made. The viands were various, to each of their taste, And the Bee brought the honey to sweeten the feast. Then ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... ever beset by a dun? ducked by the Goody from thine own window, when "creeping like snail unwillingly" to morning prayers?—Ibid., Vol. IV. ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... ice blockade from the 9th of December to the 13th, the slopes in front of the lines were a continuous glare of ice, so that movements away from the roads and broken paths could be made only with the greatest difficulty and at a snail's pace. Men and horses were seen falling whenever they attempted to move across country. A man slipping on the hillside had no choice but to sit down and slide to the bottom, and groups of men in the forts and lines found constant entertainment in watching these mishaps. ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... angry, because she had no a new coach too; therefore, resolving to ruin Tom, she complained to the king that he had spoken insolently to her. The king sent for him. Tom, to escape his fury, crept into an empty snail shell, and lay there till he was almost starved; when peeping out of the shell he saw a fine butterfly settled on the ground: he now ventured out, and getting on it, the butterfly took wing, and mounted into the air with little Tom on his back. Away he flew ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... at that bank, which is standing very nearly still, and you will realise that you and your canoe are standing very nearly still too; and that all your exertions are only enabling you to creep on at the pace of a crushed snail, and that it's the water that is going the pace. It's a ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... snail's fine shell, Which for the colours did excel, The fair Queen Mab becoming well, So lively was the limning; The seat the soft wool of the bee, The cover, gallantly to see, The wing of a pied butterfly; ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... a-wooing ride, Kitty alone, &c.; This frog he would a-wooing ride, And on a snail he got ...
— The Nursery Rhyme Book • Unknown
... have we to do but put it in our poke and getting us to the moneychangers' tables, which you know stand still laden with groats and florins, take as much as we will thereof? None will see us, and so may we grow rich of a sudden, without having to smear walls all day long, snail-fashion.' ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... initial letter! King Rene himself never made a better! Finished down to the leaf and the snail, Down to the eyes on the peacock's tail! And now, as I turn the volume over, And see what lies between cover and cover, What treasures of art these pages hold, All ablaze with crimson and gold, God forgive me! I seem to feel A certain satisfaction ...
— The Golden Legend • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... that, after six years, I have realized the pretty Eastern proverb, "By patience and perseverance, and a bottle of sweet-oil, the snail at length reaches Jerusalem,"—now that by God's unfailing help I have finished my difficult task, I can but commit the book into the hands of the women who have implanted in me, next to my faith in God, faith in the "Power ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... me—the swift year's flight I count like miser's gold; I keep the "watches of the night," I wait until the morning light Its glories snail unfold. ...
— Lays from the West • M. A. Nicholl
... the journey's end, we met almost every day long trains of government wagons, laden with stores for the troops and crawling at a snail's pace toward ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... on a housetop, with only a bundle of musty papers, the tags of broken conversations, and one or two dead, distorted nerves. That is our common risk. But I shall accomplish as much of the road as God permits the snail, and I shall have moulded something; life will have justified itself to me, or I to life. But that is ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick
... by Russolo (No. 23), is "a fantastic impression produced not by line but by colour." An elongated insect or snail—is it a man or a grasshopper?—is in the first plane; back of him is a girl's face with pleading eyes; an explosion of light in the background is evidently intended for an electric lamp; the rest ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... Consider the ludicrous spectacle of the rapidly moving legs and the flailing arms, with the actor's face turned toward the audience, as he declaims sonorously of his haste to perform his vital errand, while making but a snail's progress. Truly then his plea of exhaustion would not be without excuse! This is an explanation at once simpler, more potentially comic, more in accord with what we predicate as the spirit of Plautus, and furthermore ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke
... mountain-goat. It was all to no avail, however, and they gave up in discouragement, and were about to leave the boys to perish, when the inch-worm came along and offered her services. The animals laughed her to scorn. What could she do, with her snail-pace, when they all, who were so fleet of foot, ...
— Fifty-Two Story Talks To Boys And Girls • Howard J. Chidley
... journey from the Red River, and the Ka[']-ka still lived, as it does now, at Ko-thlu-el-lon-ne, when the wonderful Snail People (not snails, as may be inferred, but a tribe of that name), who lived in the "Place of the Snails" (K'ia-ma-k'ia-kwin), far south of where Zuni now is, caused, by means of their magic power, all the game ...
— Zuni Fetiches • Frank Hamilton Cushing
... remember that I made seven days from Calais to Paris, by laying out my journeys at the rate of travelling in England, thirty miles a-day; and did not find but that I could have gone in a third of the time! I shall not be such a snail the next time. It is said that on Lord Tavistock's return, he is to decide whom he will marry. Is it true that the Choiseuls totter, and that the Broglios are to succeed; or is there a Charles Townshend at Versailles? Adieu! my ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... faintest breeze. Only a weak swirl of current from the far-off Gulf Stream pushed my hulk onward; and this, I suppose, was helped a little by that attraction of floating bodies for each other which brings chips and leaves together on the surface of even the stillest pool. But a snail goes faster than I was going; and it was only at the end of a full hour of watching that I could see—yet even then could not be quite certain about it—that my position a ...
— In the Sargasso Sea - A Novel • Thomas A. Janvier
... the earth creep on at snail's pace: the Republic thunders past with the rush of an express," says a recent American writer. "Think of it!" he continues; "a Great Britain and Ireland called forth from the wilderness, as if by magic, in less than the span of a ...
— The Story of Garfield - Farm-boy, Soldier, and President • William G. Rutherford
... inclined to the left, occupied Caesarea, traversed the salt desert and the river Halys, and invested Angora; while the Sultan, immovable and ignorant in his post, compared the Tartar swiftness to the crawling of a snail. He returned on the wings of indignation to the relief of Angora; and as both generals were alike impatient for action, the plains round that city were the scene of a memorable battle, which has immortalized the glory of Timur ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... warts to whoever opens the parcel. Another mode of transferring warts is to touch each wart with a pebble, and place the pebbles in a bag, which should be lost on the way to church; whoever finds the bag gets the warts." A common Warwickshire custom was to rub the warts with a black snail, stick the snail on a thorn bush, and then, say the folks, as the snail dies so ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... his Excellence Baron de Goldburg, Leading the Dowager Duchess of Snail; Feathers and fringe on the top of her bonnet, Roses and rings on the ...
— Five Mice in a Mouse-trap - by the Man in the Moon. • Laura E. Richards
... fennel mode: The tender, the dulcet, the rosy tone; The passing passion, the forgotten tone; The rosemary, wallflower mode; The rainbow mode and the nightingale mode The English tin, the cinnamon mode, Fresh pomegranates, green linden-bloom mode; The lonely gormandizer mode, The skylark, the snail, the barking tone; And the honey flower, the marjoram mode; The lion's skin, true pelican mode, The ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... to the top of a fresh mole-hill, I fell to my neck in the hole, through which that animal had cast up the earth, and coined some lie, not worth remembering, to excuse myself for spoiling my clothes. I likewise broke my right shin against the shell of a snail, which I happened to stumble over, as I was walking alone and thinking on ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... hundred Highlanders, a few cavalrymen, and Lord George Murray himself tarried with the guns. The main column disappeared, lost among mountains and hills; this detached number had the wild country, the forbidding road, the December day to themselves. To get the guns and ammunition-wagons along proved a snail-and-tortoise business. Guns and escort fell ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston
... antithesis—an ex-and concentric movement. If two circles are drawn and painted respectively yellow and blue, brief concentration will reveal in the yellow a spreading movement out from the centre, and a noticeable approach to the spectator. The blue, on the other hand, moves in upon itself, like a snail retreating into its shell, and draws away from the spectator. [Footnote: These statements have no scientific basis, but are founded purely ...
— Concerning the Spiritual in Art • Wassily Kandinsky
... beans, and flapjacks when the cooks were in the humor; to hook the teams to the wagons and break corral, and amidst cracking of lashes stretch out into column, then to lurch and groan onward, at snail's pace, through the constantly increasing day until soon we also were wrung and parched by a relentless ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... distant, and that on this far frontier of the solar system the sun could not appear to it larger than the blaze of a tallow candle. To us it was wholly incredible how, in that dim remoteness, it could still hold true to the central force and follow at a snail-pace, yet with unvarying exactitude, its stupendous orbit. Clemens said that heretofore Neptune, the planetary outpost of our system, had been called the tortoise of the skies, but that comparatively it was rapid in its motion, and had become ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... Ward, and I had met for our aperitif at the Terrace Larue, by the Madeleine, when the white automobile came snaking its way craftily through the traffic. Turning in to pass a victoria on the wrong side, it was forced down to a snail's pace near the curb and not far from our table, where it paused, checked by a blockade at the next corner. I heard Ward utter a half-suppressed guttural of what I took to be amazement, and ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... down across gulches, and anon through loose shale on ticklishly sloping banks, characterize the passage through the canon. The sun is broiling hot, and my knee swollen and painful. It is barely possible to crawl along at a snail's pace by keeping my game leg stiff; bending the knee is attended with agony. Frequent rests are necessary, and an examination reveals ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... a snail's pace, and at last dismounted, and groped his way. He got more than one fall in the snow, and thought himself very fortunate, when, at last, something black towered before him, and ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... hair, full of duck weed, and tangled With snail shells, and moss and eel-grass It was, and it straggled and dangled Over forehead and shoulders—alas, A wild ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... of all countries many refer to insects, birds, animals, persons, actions, trades, food or children. In Chinese rhymes we have the cricket, cicada, spider, snail, firefly, ladybug and butterfly and others. Among fowls we have the bat, crow, magpie, cock, hen, duck and goose. Of animals, the dog, cow, horse, mule, donkey, camel, and mouse, are the favorites. There are also rhymes on the snake and frog, and others without number on ...
— The Chinese Boy and Girl • Isaac Taylor Headland
... we find "some wigs," "a dainty dishes," "a mutton shoulder," "a little mine," "hog-fat," and "an amelet": the menu is scarcely appetising, especially when among "Fishes and Shellfishes" our Portuguese Lucullus sets down the "hedgehog," "snail," and "wolf." After this such trifles as "starch" arranged under the heading of "Metals and Minerals," and "brick" and "whitelead" under that of "Common Stones" fall almost flat; but one would like to be initiated into the mysteries of ...
— English as she is spoke - or, A jest in sober earnest • Jose da Fonseca
... taking one. In a very short time he overtakes the noted horse-thief. Gus was sitting in the buggy sound asleep; the lines were hanging down over the dashboard, and the old horse was marching along at a snail's pace. He was out some two miles from town, and, no doubt, had traveled at this gait all the way. He was faced about, and, assisted by the sheriff, drove back to town. He was then placed under arrest and sent to jail, ...
— The Twin Hells • John N. Reynolds
... me to go on. She was deeply interested. I could hear her breath coming fast, though we were walking at a snail's pace. I longed to confide in her absolutely, ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... diminutive houses on wheels drawn by a huge motor. What their end and purpose might be, is imaginable. If it is for the comfort of the High Command en campagne, the great clumsy procession rivaling the speed of a snail is a heap of ...
— Lige on the Line of March - An American Girl's Experiences When the Germans Came Through Belgium • Glenna Lindsley Bigelow
... reached together my aunt's cottage, in the ancient Barony of Gruids. It was a low, long, dingy edifice of turf, four or five rooms in length, but only one in height, that, lying along a gentle acclivity, somewhat resembled at a distance a huge black snail creeping up the hill. As the lower apartment was occupied by my uncle's half-dozen milk-cows, the declination of the floor, consequent on the nature of the site, proved of signal importance, from the free drainage which it secured; the second ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... summons, the other proceeded to do what he threatened, systematically laying the district waste, felling the timber and cutting down the fruit-trees, while slowly moving on at the rate of ten or twelve furlongs a day. The Acarnanians, owing to the snail-like progress of the enemy, were lulled into a sense of security. They even began bringing down their cattle from their alps, and devoted themselves to the tillage of far the greater portion of their fields. But Agesilaus only waited till their rash confidence reached its climax; then on the fifteenth ...
— Hellenica • Xenophon
... about you and found another. We took you up as a babe and cared for you; but the parish allowance was stopped when you was fourteen. It shan't be said of us that bare we took you in and bare we turn you out. But marry you must. It's ordained o' nature. There's the difference atwixt a slug and a snail. The snail's got her own house to go into. A slug hasn't. When she's ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... as lightning, and as rapid, darted through poor Fortune's brain during the few moments that she stood with her hand on David's shoulder, while he drew from his magpie's nest a heterogeneous mass of rubbish—pebbles, snail shells, bits of glass and china, ...
— The Laurel Bush • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... land, flashing colours livelier than the spring-meadows bordering their line of passage. Guy, with a nod for all, and a greeting for the best-disposed, pushed on toward the van, till the gathering block compelled him to adopt the snail's pace of the advance party, and gave him work enough to keep his two horses from being jammed with the mass. Now and then he cast a weather-eye on the heavens, and was soon confirmed in an opinion he ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the Benevolent Despot, the Peter Grievous, and the Martyred Snail, are people to ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby
... into Egypt with his other sons. They also carried with them choice presents from their father for the ruler of Egypt, things that arouse wonder outside of Palestine, such as the murex, which is the snail that produces the Tyrian purple, and various kinds of balm, and almond oil, and pistachio oil, and honey as hard as stone. Furthermore, Jacob put double money in their hand to provide against a rise in prices in the meantime. And after all these matters were attended to, he spake to his sons, ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... capitalists yourselves for a while, you hard-working farmers. Money is easy and credit long, now. Take your chance at it and make five hundred per cent on your investments. I'm ready to take subscriptions for stock in this new town right now. Why not stop this snail's pace of earnin' and go to livin' like gentlemen—like some Careyville men I know who own hundreds of acres they never earned and they won't improve so's to ...
— Winning the Wilderness • Margaret Hill McCarter
... came a change. The passion ebbed out of the face, the paper fluttered out of the loosened fingers, the red-rimmed eyes took on another look. Snail-slow the trembling hand ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... spring, And day's at the morn, The morning's at seven, The hillside's dew-pearled, The lark's on the wing, The snail's on the thorn; God's in His heaven— ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed
... little faster?" said a whiting to a snail, "There's a porpoise close behind us, and he's treading on my tail. See how eagerly the lobsters and the turtles all advance! They are waiting on the shingle—will you come and join the dance? Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, will you join the dance? Will you, won't you, ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... to say that there was plenty of excitement left for me. Lord, how I made that poor brute travel when I got among the trees! Though we must have made it over fifty miles from Melbourne, we had done it at a snail's pace; and those stolen oats had brisked the old girl up to such a pitch that she fairly bolted when she felt her nose turned south. By Jove, it was no joke, in and out among those trees, and under ...
— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... with some subordinate whom my duty compelled me to reprove, and how often have I jeered at myself for a fraud as the doughty platform combatant, when shrinking from blaming some lad or lass for doing their work badly. An unkind look or word has availed to make me shrink myself as a snail into its shell, while, on the platform, opposition ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... when my hour comes, and not before," Hokosa answered. "We did well yonder, and yet the most of us are alive to tell the tale, for I knew when and how to go. Be ready, king, for the foe press us close, and that mob behind us crawls onward like a snail." ...
— The Wizard • H. Rider Haggard
... packed down fully a foot by the traffic, was like a gutter. On either side spread the blanket of soft snow crystals. If a man turned into this in an endeavor to pass, his dogs would wallow perforce to their bellies and slow down to a snail's pace. So the men lay close to their leaping sleds and waited. No alteration in position occurred down the fifteen miles of Bonanza and Klondike to Dawson, where the Yukon was encountered. Here the first relays waited. But here, intent to kill their first ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London
... out four and twenty strong, Sailors and tailors in a throng; We heard a tale, we saw a sail, And then returned to kill a snail. ...
— Little Folks (November 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... out speechless thanksgiving to the God of all grace and consolation, who had given him back his friend, and that in the time of his sore need. So true was his heart in its love, that, giving thanks for his friend, he forgot that friend was the Marquis of Lossie, before whom his enemy was but as a snail ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... the leaf. Touch one of them with the end of a fine human hair and the lobes of the leaf instantly close together[2] in virtue of an act of contraction of part of their substance, just as the body of a snail contracts into its shell when one ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... his diligence and progress. At the end of the letter comes this little touch as to some of the schoolboy belongings which had been left behind in Professor Newman's house. "Harry has left divers snail-shells fastened on pasteboard. Perhaps he did not know how ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... group found themselves opposite the beginning of the row of cages containing the menagerie, and started out on a tour of inspection. There was a big crowd and progress could only be made at a snail's pace. By the time they had reached the elephants it was close on to the time set for the show to begin, and after feeding the big brutes a few peanuts they hurried into the main tent. They secured seats ...
— Bert Wilson on the Gridiron • J. W. Duffield
... savages might have wrought in the camp; he could think of nothing but Flora; could only hope and pray that she might have made good her escape. The catamaran was sailing as well as ever, for there was a strong breeze blowing, yet Leslie ground his teeth in a fever of impatience at what he deemed her snail-like pace; for his first business now must be to ascertain the fate of the girl he loved. The very worst that could possibly have happened, apart from harm to her, was comparatively unimportant. Yet, all the same, his mind once set ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... rock a hermit crab has taken possession of a sea snail's shell, and set up housekeeping; with body partly hidden he waves his long bony tentacles, while his beady eyes stare at us from ...
— Byways Around San Francisco Bay • William E. Hutchinson
... year, is nothing at all towards buying Roguin's practice. Little Xandrot, as we call him, thinks, like all the rest of the world, that we are richer than we are. If his father, that big farmer who is as close as a snail, won't sell a hundred thousand francs worth of land Xandrot can't be a notary, for Roguin's practice is worth four or five hundred thousand. If Crottat does not pay half down, how could he negotiate the affair? Cesarine must have two hundred thousand francs dot; ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac |
