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More "Gnaw" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in the swamps, and gnaw the bark from trees. I an't afraid of snakes! I'd rather have one near me than him," ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... is usually brought into the hive enclosed in a little cage, with iron wires, which is hung between two combs. The cage has a door made of wax and honey, which the workers, their anger over, proceed to gnaw, thus freeing the prisoner, whom they will often receive without any ill-will. Mr. Simmins, manager of the great apiary at Rottingdean, has recently discovered another method of introducing a queen, which, being extremely simple and almost invariably ...
— The Life of the Bee • Maurice Maeterlinck
... thousand millions. Your day will come, and in due course the graveyard rat will gnaw as calmly at your bump of acquisitiveness as at the mean coat of ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... and she met a rat. So she said: "Rat! rat! gnaw rope; rope won't hang butcher; butcher won't kill ox; ox won't drink water; water won't quench fire; fire won't burn stick; stick won't beat dog; dog won't bite pig; piggy won't get over the stile; and I shan't get home tonight." But ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... fray, rub; gnaw, corrode; roughen, ruffle, agitate; worry, harass, tease, irritate, vex, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... Pelicier, published an edition of Voltaire, with the following title: Works of Voltaire, of the French Academy. "That will attract purchasers," said the ingenious editor. The general opinion was that M. Charles Loyson would be the genius of the century; envy was beginning to gnaw at him—a sign of glory; and this verse was composed ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... comprehend it, Do not comprehend the reason, How thou, Hiisi, here hast wandered, Why thou cam'st, thou evil creature, 170 Thus to bite, and thus to torture, Thus to eat, and thus to gnaw me. Art thou some disease-created Death that Jumala ordains me, Or art thou another creature, Fashioned and unloosed by others, Hired beforehand to torment me, Or hast thou ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... gentlemanly instinct of the Constantinople cur. They get round you and worry you,' he declaimed, rising, and striding about the room, with an occasional double-handed clutch at the lapels of his coat, his one gesture of rage—'they worry you for their twopenny-halfpenny mouthful of lineage, and they'd gnaw their own mothers out of their coffins ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... feasting in the lodges of the Iroquois, And scalps will hang on the high ridge pole, But wolves will roam where the Yengees dwelt And will gnaw the bones of them all, Of the man, the woman, and the child. Victory and glory Aieroski gives to his children, The Mighty Six Nations, greatest ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler
... but carry that quiet conviction into all the mysteries, as they sometimes seem to be, of our daily lives, and interpret everything in the light of that great thought, how different all our days would be! How far above the petty anxieties and cares and troubles that gnaw away so much of our strength and joy; how serene, peaceful, lofty, submissive, would be our lives, and how in the darkest darkness there would be a great light, not only of hope for a distant future, but of confident ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... I'd better stay sitting down," thought Uncle Wiggily. "Perhaps some one may come along, and I can ask them go get Nurse Jane to gnaw for me another rheumatism crutch out of a corn-stalk. I'll wait here ...
— Uncle Wiggily and Old Mother Hubbard - Adventures of the Rabbit Gentleman with the Mother Goose Characters • Howard R. Garis
... always drill through the shell at the one spot where the meat will be most exposed. Occasionally one makes a mistake, but not often. It stands them in hand to know, and they do know. Doubtless, if butternuts were a main source of my food, and I were compelled to gnaw into them, I should learn, too, on which side ...
— Squirrels and Other Fur-Bearers • John Burroughs
... letters I was grieved to learn that starvation stared him in the face; the fishing, that promised so well when I passed, having entirely failed, and no deer were to be found. He wrote me, however, that he would maintain his post while a piece of parchment remained to gnaw! ...
— Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory - Volume II. (of 2) • John M'lean
... eke of mice, Of flies and bed-bugs, frogs and lice, Summons thee hither to the door-sill, To gnaw it where, with just a morsel Of oil, he paints the spot for thee:— There com'st thou, hopping on to me! To work, at once! The point which made me craven Is forward, on the ledge, engraven. Another bite ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... other, by excavating at the same rate, and by endeavouring to make equal spherical hollows, but never allowing the spheres to break into each other. Now bees, as may be clearly seen by examining the edge of a growing comb, do make a rough, circumferential wall or rim all round the comb; and they gnaw into this from the opposite sides, always working circularly as they deepen each cell. They do not make the whole three-sided pyramidal base of any one cell at the same time, but only the one rhombic plate which stands on the extreme growing ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin
... on the highest point of the crags at the uttermost end of the island. On the side towards the sea the rock was once rent sheer away in some globe-cataclysm; it rises up a straight wall from the base where the waves gnaw at the stone below high-water mark. Any assault is made impossible by the dangerous reefs that stretch far out to sea, with the sparkling waves of the Mediterranean playing over them. So, only from the sea can you discern the square ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... him for a short time to reason, and he would crawl up the bank and gnaw a morsel of the maple sugar; but he could not eat much, for it was in a tough, compact cake, which his jaws had not power to break. All that day and the next night he lay on the banks of the salt stream, or rushed wildly over the plain. It was ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... gnaw at the pit of our stomachs, we had cut down our meals to the minimum amount of food that would keep us alive; we were so weak we no longer were sure where our feet were going to when we put them down. But all the fish we had to smoke was two or ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... the tobacco sack shut with his teeth. "He wouldn't 'gnaw' you—he wouldn't have come near you. He's whip trained. And I'd have been there ...
— Chip, of the Flying U • B. M. Bower
... of what had happened, his wonder as to what would come next, and the hunger that had begun to gnaw at him, Clare could not sleep. And as he lay awake, thoughts came ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... Father of Waters where the races met, men and women were born into the world, who were to die in ancient Cuba, who were to be left fatherless in the struggle soon to come, who were to live to see new monsters rise to gnaw at the vitals of the Republic, and to hear again the cynical laugh of Europe. But they were also to see their country a power in the world, perchance the greatest power. While Europe had wrangled, the child of the West had grown into manhood and taken a seat among the highest, to share with ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... to do. At last he thought of the stake to which that hateful wire was fastened. The stake was of wood, and Peter's teeth would cut wood. Peter's heart gave a great leap of hope, and he began at once to dig away the snow from around the stake, and then settled himself to gnaw ...
— The Adventures of Danny Meadow Mouse • Thornton W. Burgess
... called the masque at my house where first the King did see her. It was I that advised her how to bear herself. And what gratitude has been shown me? I have been sent to sequester myself in my see; I have been set to gnaw my fingers as they had been old bones thrown to a dog. Truly, no juicy meats have been my share. Yet it was I set this woman where ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford
... reckoned without those superficial beach jealousies which overlie the essential solidarity of the fishermen. Neither man used her much. Neither man looked after her. She was a bone of contention that each feared to gnaw. While the poor little craft lay on the beach, or in the gutter above the sea-wall, the mice ate holes into her old sail and her gear was distributed half-way over ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... length perfectly to inclose the Animal, which, by other observations I have made, I ghess to contain it, and become, as it were a womb to it, so long, till it be fit and prepar'd to be translated into another state, at what time, like (what they say of) Vipers, they gnaw their way through the womb that bred them; divers of these kinds I have met with upon Goosberry leaves, Rose-tree leaves, Willow leaves, and many ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... Turtle: "Friend, you have teeth; you gnaw through the leather trap. I will go and see to it that the hunter keeps away. If we both do our best our friend will not lose ...
— More Jataka Tales • Re-told by Ellen C. Babbitt
... were to take a notion to be great singers. Is there any use for me to tell you that if you persist you will succeed? Not a bit of it. You might succeed in ruining the nerves of your teacher. You might easily make those who hear you practise "want to gnaw a file and flee into the wilderness." But you would never learn to sing. There is no hope for some of us till ...
— Sermons on Biblical Characters • Clovis G. Chappell
... battering it to a jelly as he rises out of the water. The flesh is eaten raw by the aborigines in their wild state, but the more civilized "burn it," as they say, "like white men;" that is, they cut off huge lumps of the flesh, lay them before a fire to roast, gnaw off the surface as fast as it burns, and put down the remainder to toast again until the appetite ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... in rum and of rotten seal blubber, he would rush on the scent and greedily swallow whatever was offered. When he realised the sad truth that a huge hook with a strong barb was hidden inside this tempting dish and that it was no easy matter to disgorge the tasty morsel, he would try to gnaw through the shaft of the hook with his teeth. Very occasionally he might succeed, but usually his efforts failed. Attached to the book was a length of strong iron chain; and sometimes, though defeated ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... added to the difficulties of the Government, as Mr. Bonar Law had complained in March. It was to placate them that the Convention had been summoned. It was a bone thrown to a snarling dog, and the longer there was anything to gnaw the longer would the dog keep quiet. The Ulster delegates understood this perfectly, and, as their chief desire was to help the Government to get on with the war, they had no wish to curtail the proceedings of the Convention, although they ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill
... that the bread is the true body of Christ, as Hesshusius does; but that it is the communion, i.e., that by which the union occurs (consociatio fit) with the body of Christ, which occurs in the use, and certainly not without thinking, as when mice gnaw the bread.... The Son of God is present in the ministry of the Gospel, and there He is certainly efficacious in the believers, and He is present not on account of the bread, but on account of man, as He says, 'Abide ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... steady gnaw, gnaw at the pit of our stomachs, we had cut down our meals to the minimum amount of food that would keep us alive; we were so weak we no longer were sure where our feet were going to when we put them down. But all the fish ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... were so many that it was impossible to bury them all. We sent messengers to other parties of Boers for help, and while they were gone we starved, for there was no food to eat, and game was very scarce. Yes, it was a piteous sight to see the children cry for food and gnaw old bits of leather or strips of hide cut from Kaffir shields to stay the craving of their stomachs. Some of them died of that hunger, and I grew so thin that when I chanced to see myself in a pool of water where I went to wash ...
— Swallow • H. Rider Haggard
... and her life was embittered by their terrible import. A pall of gloom shrouded her sky, and anguish began to gnaw at her heart amidst all the splendors of the Tuileries and the ...
— Hortense, Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... to be said of the behaviour of beavers who gnaw the base of a tree with their chisel-edged teeth till only a narrow core is left—to snap in the first gale, bringing the useful branches down to the ground? What is to be said of the harvest-mouse constructing ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... clairvoyance, a faculty of divination which caused her endless torture. Hardly a deception of Andrea's but seemed to send a shadow across her spirit; she felt an indefinite sense of disquietude which sometimes condensed itself into a suspicion. And this suspicion would gnaw at her heart, embittering kisses and caresses, till it was dissipated by the transports and ardent passion of her ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... dared, so seriously, to insult one of his ministers. But, during the four or five days that the journey continued, they incessantly tormented him; and did not give him a fourth part of what was necessary for his support, so that the unfortunate man was frequently obliged to gnaw the bones which the Moors had thrown away; they also forced him to make the whole journey on foot; it was pretty long; for these gentlemen, on their arrival at St. Louis, estimated it at a hundred and forty leagues at the least, because the Moors made them go so ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to Senegal in 1816 • J. B. Henry Savigny and Alexander Correard
... General's eye on the way to Quivira, now and then there would be a horse, usually a mare with a colt, who slipped her stake-rope. Little gray coyotes came in the night and gnawed them. But coyotes will not gnaw a rope unless it has been well rubbed with buffalo ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al
... euer ciuile hate gnaw and deuour our state? Shall neuer we this blade, Our bloud hath bloudie made, Lay downe? these armes downe lay As robes we weare alway? But as from age to age, So passe from rage to rage? Our hands shall we not rest To bath in our owne brest? And shall thick in each ...
— A Discourse of Life and Death, by Mornay; and Antonius by Garnier • Philippe de Mornay
... was surer these spider swarms could not drop into the ravine, he found a place where he could sit down, and sat and fell into deep thought and began after his manner to gnaw his knuckles and bite his nails. And from this he was moved by the coming of the man ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... said, "follow me. Our friend, the gazelle, is caught in a net. Come and gnaw the ropes ...
— Fifty Fabulous Fables • Lida Brown McMurry
... In the morning I will start for Fort Norman, and you will remain to look after Helene and the little Victor." The older man rose and faced his brother. "And if harm comes to either of them while I am gone may the wolves gnaw your bones upon the crust of the snow. That little cabin holds all that I love in the world. I never boast, and I never threaten—nor do I ever repent the work of my hands." He paused and looked squarely into his brother's eyes, and when ...
— Connie Morgan in the Fur Country • James B. Hendryx
... let us look into the future. Should you die, O King, the lands will be desolate; but for me, the kahuna, the name will live on from one generation to another; but my death will be before thine, and when I am up on the heaven-feared altar then my words will gnaw thee, O King, and the rains and the sun ...
— Hawaiian Folk Tales - A Collection of Native Legends • Various
... since August the squirrels have known this and the stripped spindles lie by the score under the big pasture pines where these have left them after eating the seeds. It seems much work for small pay for the squirrel. He must climb venturesomely to the very tip of the slippery limb, gnaw the cone from its hold, then run down the tree and gnaw it to pieces for the tiny seeds within. So light are these seeds, wing and all, that it takes twenty to thirty thousand of them to weigh a pound and it is probably fortunate that squirrels do not live by pine seed ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... appearances before strangers is not, as many suppose, entirely a product of our modern civilization. Centuries before we were born or thought of there was a widely press-agented boy in Sparta who even went so far as to let a fox gnaw his tender young stomach without permitting the discomfort inseparable from such a proceeding to interfere with either his facial expression or his flow of small talk. Historians have handed it down that, even in the later stages of the meal, the polite lad continued ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... miss Jan for a couple of days, despite the comforting society of her mate; but Jan did not miss her a scrap. At present there was not an ounce of sentiment in his composition. He was kept warm, he lay snugly soft, and his stomach was generally full. He had great gristly bones to gnaw and play with, and Betty Murdoch, with a little solid-rubber ball, played with him also by the hour together. Beyond these things Jan had no thought or desire at present. He grew fast, and enjoyed every minute ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... have sufficient shade to prevent their being burned by the sun. If they are much exposed to its rays, their branches are scattered, crack, and the tree dies. They are also infested with worms, which gnaw the bark all around, then attack the interior and destroy them. The only remedy which has hitherto been found, is to employ people to kill these worms, which are deposited by a small, scaly winged insect, which gnaws the tree; as soon as ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... a piercing glance on him, and seemed to read in the depths of his soul. "Is the matter settled?" he asked. "Pray, my friend, tell me the truth without circumlocution. It is better for me to know it at once than allow this incertitude longer to gnaw at my heart. Scharnhorst, I implore you, tell me the truth! Has the commander of the Silesian army ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... some mair o't?" said Mause, clearing her voice with a preliminary cough, "I will take up my testimony against you ance and again.— Philistines ye are, and Edomites—leopards are ye, and foxes—evening wolves, that gnaw not the bones till the morrow—wicked dogs, that compass about the chosen—thrusting kine, and pushing bulls of Bashan—piercing serpents ye are, and allied baith in name and nature with the great Red Dragon; Revelations, twalfth chapter, ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... gentlemen of the party. It very soon gave her great comfort, however, to see that Marilla Rowens had just missed it in her calculations, and she chuckled immensely to find Dudley Venner devoting himself chiefly to Helen Darley. If the Rowens woman should hook Dudley, she felt as if she should gnaw all her nails off for spite. To think of seeing her barouching about Rockland behind a pair of long-tailed bays and a coachman with a band on his hat, while she, Blanche Creamer, was driving herself about ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... he whispered in the winged horse's ear, "thou must help me to slay this insufferable monster; or else thou shalt fly back to thy solitary mountain peak without thy friend Bellerophon. For either the Chimaera dies, or its three mouths shall gnaw this head of mine, which has slumbered upon ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... the corner board, then to gnaw. All night long at intervals he sounded like a big rat in a barn. Sometimes he rested, panting hard, then went ...
— Frank of Freedom Hill • Samuel A. Derieux
... before his eyes; if he had found any he would have gathered some dead wood, made a fire in the ditch and have had a capital supper off the warm, round vegetables with which he would first of all have warmed his cold hands. But it was too late in the year, and he would have to gnaw a raw beetroot which he might pick up in a field as he ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... forget, And not be the worse for forgetting; but yet Never, never, oh never! earth's luckiest sinner Hath unpunish'd forgotten the hour of his dinner! Indigestion, that conscience of every bad stomach, Shall relentlessly gnaw and pursue him with some ache Or some pain; and trouble, remorseless, his best ease, As the Furies once troubled the sleep ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... Messieurs of the upper clergy who suffer monks to enjoy from 5 to 6,000 livres income each person, whilst they see curates, who are at least as necessary, reduced to the lighter portion, as little for themselves as for their parish?"—And they yet gnaw on this slight pittance to pay the free gift. In this, as in the rest, the poor are charged to discharge the rich. In the diocese of Clermont, "the curates, even with the simple fixed rates, are subject to a tax of 60, 80, 100, 120 livres and even more; the vicars, who live ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... us," said Uncle Toby. "It's for Skyrocket. I want to get him a nice bone to gnaw. It will keep him quiet on the ride," he explained. "I'm going to get a fine, juicy ...
— The Curlytops and Their Playmates - or Jolly Times Through the Holidays • Howard R. Garis
... and something to enter, which came through the room, and also walkt about that room with a heavy step during half an hour, then crept under the bed where Captain Hart and Captain Carelesse lay, where it did seem (as it were) to bite and gnaw the mat and bed-coards, as if it would tear and rend the feather beds; which having done a while, then would heave a while, and rest; then heave them up again in the bed more high than it did before, sometime ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... prince, thus haughty, bold, and young, Rage gnaw'd the lip, and wonder chain'd the tongue. Silence at length the gay Antinous broke, Constrain'd a smile, and thus ambiguous spoke: "What god to your untutor'd youth affords This headlong torrent of amazing words? May Jove delay thy reign, and cumber late So bright a genius with the ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... after this another vision saw, In France, at Aix, in his Chapelle once more, That his right arm an evil bear did gnaw; Out of Ardennes he saw a leopard stalk, His body dear did savagely assault; But then there dashed a harrier from the hall, Leaping in the air he sped to Charles call, First the right ear of that grim bear he caught, ...
— The Song of Roland • Anonymous
... was set outside the door, and I was beginning to gnaw the lean limbs of the Normandy chicken, to drink the clear cider and to munch the hunk of white bread, which was ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... that gnaws his bone, I couch and gnaw it all alone— A time will come, which is not yet, When I'll bite him ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... cutworms. The chipping sparrow and the wren in the shrubbery look out for all kinds of insects. They watch over the orchard and feed freely on the enemies of the apple and other fruit trees. The trunks of these trees are often attacked by borers, which gnaw holes in the bark and wood, and often cause the death of the trees. The woodpeckers hunt for these appetizing borers and by means of their barbed tongues bring them from their hiding-places. On the outside of the bark of ...
— Agriculture for Beginners - Revised Edition • Charles William Burkett
... decree which should number his daughter among the patricians of this Republic where, through long generations, his family had made their boast that they represented the people, was in a feverish mood—grave, elated, sad by turns, unwilling to confess to the loneliness which was beginning to gnaw at his heart, for Marina was his life; he did not think he could live without her; he knew he could not live and see her unhappy beside him; and he was old to learn the new, pathetic part he must play—the waiting for death, quite alone in the ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... hatred of him began to gnaw at my heart ... I dreamed still of what I would do when I had grown to be a man ... but now it was not any more to be a great traveller or explorer, but to grow into a strong man and kill my uncle, first ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... larger and fatter, and their fur is more abundant and of a darker colour than any we had hitherto seen: their favourite food seems to be the bark of the cottonwood and willow, as we have seen no other species of tree that has been touched by them, and these they gnaw to the ground through a diameter ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... there are plenty under Orleans. But if I make not the better speed, the town will have fallen, or yielded, rescue or no rescue, and of rescue there is no hope at all. The devil fights for the English, who will soon be swarming over the Loire, and that King of Bourges of ours will have to flee, and gnaw horse's fodder, oats and barley, with your friends ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... rising in the same art, at a time when he does not expect it, some unknown man of beautiful genius, who not only equals him, but in time surpasses him by a great measure. Of such persons, in truth, it may be said that there is no iron that they would not gnaw in their rage, nor any evil which they would not do if they were able, for it seems to them too grievous an affront in the eyes of the world, that children whom they saw born should have reached maturity almost in one bound from their ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 04 (of 10), Filippino Lippi to Domenico Puligo • Giorgio Vasari
... she said authoritatively. "They might as well be in use as packed away in that trunk in the garret for moths to gnaw." ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... flowers of Catasetum do not secrete nectar, and he conjectured that in place of it the insects gnaw a tissue in the cavity of the labellum which has a "slightly sweet, pleasant and nutritious taste." This conjecture as well as other conclusions drawn by Darwin from Catasetum have been confirmed by Cruger—assuredly the best proof of the ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... observed, drying her tears, "I feel sore at heart. But my tears are scantier by far than they were in years gone by. With all the grief and anguish, which gnaw my heart, my ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... 'gnaw your own tail;' and off he went laughing at the joke. The miserable weasel cried and sniffed, and sniffed and cried, till by-and-by he heard the rat come back and begin to scratch outside. Presently the rat stopped, and was going away again, when the weasel begged and prayed him ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... conscience! She could not understand herself; she had taken Ulick to Dowlands and had lived with him there—in her father's house. So awful did her life seem to her that her thoughts stopped, and she became possessed of the desire of escape which takes a trapped animal and forces it to gnaw off one of its legs. She must escape from this life of lies whatever it cost her; she must free herself. But how? If she went to Monsignor he would tell her she must leave the stage, and she had promised to create the part of Grania. She had promised, ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... which he had lived, bade the Capuchin hold up his wrists. Then he went nosing like a dog, until at last he found them, and his strong teeth fastened upon the cord that bound them, and began with infinite patience to gnaw it through. ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... idolised inmate was to be killed with disappointment, or to bind herself on the morrow to a life of misery, perhaps disgrace; but in the drawing-room was already a sprinkling of guests, many more were on their way. The wolf may gnaw at the vitals, but a hostess must wear a ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... may take my word for it that I shall make a fine meal of you before I think of parting with you." "Silly wretch!" said the File, as gruff as could be, "you had much better be quiet, and let me alone; for, if you gnaw for ever, you will get nothing but your trouble for your pains. Make a meal of me, indeed! why, I myself can bite the hardest iron in the shop; and if you go on with your foolish nibbling I shall tear all the teeth out of your spiteful head before ...
— Favourite Fables in Prose and Verse • Various
... and no others attended to, come what may; and if the poor judge does not hear them and settle the matter—either because he cannot or because that is not the time set apart for hearing them-forthwith they abuse him, and run him down, and gnaw at his bones, and even pick holes in his pedigree. You silly, stupid applicant, don't be in a hurry; wait for the proper time and season for doing business; don't come at dinner-hour, or at bed-time; for judges are only flesh and blood, and must ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... almost side by side, giving the world the best that was in us, not without honor; and now our country had stamped us as felons and was sending us to jail. It had suddenly discovered in us a social and moral menace to its own integrity and order, and had put upon us the stigma of rats who would gnaw the timbers of the ship of state and corrupt its cargo. The end of it all was to be a penitentiary cell, and disgrace forever, to us ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... thoroughly. For not only the crops and fruits, but the foliage of the forest itself, nay, the small twigs and the bark of the trees are the victims of their curious and energetic rapacity. They have been known even to gnaw the door-posts of the houses. Nor do they execute their task in so slovenly a way, that, as they have succeeded other plagues, so they may have successors themselves. They take pains to spoil what they leave. Like the Harpies, they smear every thing that ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... and their toil and labor continued, by night and by day. Now, according to the tradition, a little white ant, one of the kind which devours wood, came up out of the earth on the very day on which Solomon died, and began to gnaw the inside of his staff. She gnawed a little every day, until at last the staff became hollow from one end to the other; and on the day when she finished her work, the work of the Jinns was also finished. ...
— The Vizier of the Two-Horned Alexander • Frank R. Stockton
... harsh speeches, and Phoebe felt that despair which weak and loving women know, when parting is near, and they foresee the hour beyond parting—when each unkind word and look, too well remembered, will gnaw ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... not a grub, but a strange bird-beaked creature, with long legs and horns laid flat by its sides, and miniature wings on its back. Observe that the sides of the tail, and one pair of legs, are fringed with dark hairs. After a fortnight's rest in this prison this 'nymph' will gnaw her way out and swim through the water on her back, by means of that fringed tail and paddles, till she reaches the bank and the upper air. There, under the genial light of day, her skin will burst, and a four-winged ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... rape begot These yelling Monsters that with ceasless cry Surround me, as thou sawst, hourly conceiv'd And hourly born, with sorrow infinite To me, for when they list into the womb That bred them they return, and howle and gnaw My Bowels, their repast; then bursting forth 800 Afresh with conscious terrours vex me round, That rest or intermission none I find. Before mine eyes in opposition sits Grim Death my Son and foe, who sets them on, And me his Parent would full soon devour ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... handicapped but little by his splinted leg; but having eaten he lay down and commenced to gnaw at the bandage. I was sitting some little distance away devouring shellfish, of which, by the way, I ...
— Pellucidar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... game slain in the chase to be broken, or left carelessly about the encampment. They were collected in heaps, or thrown into the water. Mrs. Eastman observes that even yet the Dakotas deem it an omen of ill luck in the hunt, if the dogs gnaw the bones or a woman inadvertently steps over them; and the Chipeway interpreter, John Tanner, speaks of the same fear among that tribe. The Yurucares of Bolivia carried it to such an inconvenient extent, that they carefully put by even ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... mountains, and carry off the little children, and sell them to the Moors. The lions lie in wait for the caravans, and leap upon the camels. The wild boar roots up the corn in the valley, and the foxes gnaw the vines upon the hill. The pirates lay waste the sea-coast and burn the ships of the fishermen, and take their nets from them. In the salt-marshes live the lepers; they have houses of wattled reeds, and none may come nigh them. The beggars wander through the cities, and eat their food with ...
— Selected Prose of Oscar Wilde - with a Preface by Robert Ross • Oscar Wilde
... desert, and the tongue swells out of the mouth, And you stagger blind to the mirage, to die in the mocking drouth. And sometimes it leads to the mountain, to the light of the lone camp-fire, And you gnaw your belt in the anguish of hunger-goaded desire. And sometimes it leads to the Southland, to the swamp where the orchid glows, And you rave to your grave with the fever, and they rob the corpse for its clothes. And sometimes it leads to the Northland, and the scurvy softens ...
— The Spell of the Yukon • Robert Service
... under the raspberry bushes, then looked at me and said, "Fetch it." I knew quite well what he meant, and ran joyfully after it. I soon found it by the strong smell, but the queerest thing happened when I got it in my mouth. I began to gnaw it and play with it, and when Ned called out, "fetch it," I dropped it and ran toward him. I was not obstinate, but ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... Desdemona A most dear husband. Now, I do love her too; Not out of absolute lust,—though, peradventure, I stand accountant for as great a sin,— But partly led to diet my revenge, For that I do suspect the lusty Moor Hath leap'd into my seat: the thought whereof Doth, like a poisonous mineral, gnaw my inwards; And nothing can or shall content my soul Till I am even'd with him, wife for wife; Or, failing so, yet that I put the Moor At least into a jealousy so strong That judgement cannot cure. Which thing to do,— If this poor trash of Venice, ...
— Othello, the Moor of Venice • William Shakespeare
... by an equal ambition, all the occupants of the pea bore their way towards the delicious morsel. The journey is laborious, and the grubs must rest frequently in their provisional niches. They rest; while resting they frugally gnaw the riper tissues surrounding them; they gnaw rather to open a way than to fill ...
— A Book of Exposition • Homer Heath Nugent
... reach up on his hind legs and gnaw the standing plant. The management of a dry and slippery corn-ear at first presented some difficulty, but, as his muscles strengthened, he found himself able to sit up on his haunches and hold it squirrel-fashion in his fore-paws, nibbling, to begin with, at ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... caves, the thorax and the vertebrae of the skeletons were missing; the cave-man, having despatched his victim, bad evidently taken only the more succulent parts into his retreat. Beasts of prey merely gnaw the comparatively tender and spongy tops of the bones, leaving the hard, compact parts untouched. In the caves that were inhabited by man, however, we find the apophyses neglected, whilst the diaphyses are split open. We cannot, therefore, make any ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... influence of emotion, he could not stand before a looking-glass without noticing this phenomenon which he had so frequently remarked and which always terrified him; the blood flew to his neck, purpling the scar, which then began to gnaw the skin. ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... began, then, feebly surrendering to the gnaw of desire, he reached hastily for the glass, as if in fear that it ...
— A Son Of The Sun • Jack London
... is pointed, and his under jaw is shorter than the upper one. In front, on each jaw, he has two sharp teeth, shaped like the edge of a chisel, and these he uses to gnaw with. ...
— Friends in Feathers and Fur, and Other Neighbors - For Young Folks • James Johonnot
... priests and people was then tested by one strong wrench, and it snapped; and so long as the evil forces that caused the fissure continue to gnaw once more the bond that unites the hearts of priests and people, is it stronger you expect that bond ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan
... not your name sir call'd Antipholus? And is not that your bondman Dromio? E.Dro. Within this houre I was his bondman sir, But he I thanke him gnaw'd in two my cords, Now am I Dromio, and his ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... forges are, as far in as I could go, and stopped outside a dilapidated door leading to a back-yard. There was no light to be seen anywhere, only blessed darkness all around me; and I began to gnaw at ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... hunger." Venters laughed, and suddenly caught himself with a quick breath and felt again the little shock. When had he laughed? "It's hunger," he went on. "I've had that gnaw many a time. I've got it now. But you mustn't eat. You can have all the water you want, but ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... she expected, the cautious steps went by her on their quest, a party of eight or ten, as she judged, raising her head cautiously from her retreat to look and listen. Then she lay down again, chuckling softly as she did when the mouse escaped, even though it was to gnaw her cheese. And presently she took the road, and so ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... awakened with his kisses, and she looked upon Othello, and she saw him gnaw his under lip, and roll his eyes, and she knew he was always fatal when he looked so: and he bade her prepare for death, and to say her prayers, for he would not kill her soul. And this innocent wife, as she lay at his ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... little trip to Fredericksburg would do me no great harm," thought he; "for I, poor beast of burden that I am, have so much to annoy me, that I don't know what a good appetite is. 'Tis a bitter crust, alas! at which I am condemned to gnaw!" ...
— Andersen's Fairy Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... A tinker and a tailor, Had once a doubtful strife, sir, To make a maid a wife, sir, Whose name was Buxom Joan. For now the time was ended, When she no more intended To lick her lips at men, sir, And gnaw the sheets in vain, sir, And ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... nails," said Albert, "but I think I could gnaw down a good-sized sapling. Hold me, Dick, or I'll be ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... My conscience began to gnaw my heart Before the day was done, For other men's lives had all gone out, Like candles in the sun!— But it seem'd as if I had broke, at last, A ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... of mumble-te-peg that me and Mr. Martin played, he did not come to our house for two weeks. Mr. Travers said perhaps the earth he had to gnaw while he was drawing the peg had struck to his insides and made him sick, but I knew it couldn't be that. I've drawn pegs that were drove into every kind of earth, and it never hurt me. Earth is healthy, unless it is lime; and don't you ever let anybody drive ...
— Harper's Young People, June 29, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... during this long space of time were excessive. The biscuit was nothing more than dust mixed with worms, while the water had become bad and gave out an unbearable smell. The sailors were obliged to eat mice and sawdust to prevent themselves from dying of hunger, and to gnaw all the leather that it was possible to find. As it was easy to foresee under these circumstances, the crews were decimated by scurvy. Nineteen men died, and thirty were seized with violent pains in their arms and legs, which caused ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... Nothing more so. Do you forget the angels who lost heaven for the daughters of men? Do you forget Helen, and the fair women who made mischief and set nations by the ears before Helen was born? If jealousies that gnaw men's hearts out of their bodies,—if pangs that waste men to shadows and drive them into raving madness or moping melancholy,—if assassination and suicide are dreadful possibilities, then there is always something ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... roast mutton, an' duck, an' chicken, an' soup, an' peas, an' beans, an' termaters, an' plum-puddin', an' mince-pie—' 'Shut up with your mince-pie!' sung out Tom Simmons. 'Isn't it enough to have to gnaw on these salt chips, without hearin' about mince-pie?' 'An' more'n that' says Andy, 'there was canned peaches, an' ...
— The Magic Egg and Other Stories • Frank Stockton
... clearer insight into the immediate purposes and machinery of our lives, is afforded us. We seem endowed with a more accurate knowledge of self; the inmost workings of our souls are abruptly revealed—feeling's mysteries stand developed—our weaknesses stare us in the face—and our vices appear to gnaw the very vitals of our hope. The veil was indeed withdrawn,—and Delme's heart acknowledged, that the fair being who leant on him for support, was dearer—far dearer, than all beside. But he saw too, ambition in that heart's deep recess, and knew that its dictates, unopposed for years, were ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... years, worse than the tomb devils did the swine that ran down into the sea to cool off; and if I have changed its hiding-place once, I have twenty times. If the old General doesn't pay well for it, I shall gnaw off my fingers, on account of the sin it has cost me. I was an honest woman and could have faced the world until that night—so many years ago; and since then I have carried a load on my soul that makes me—even Hannah Hinton, ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... commenced gnawing it eagerly. The noble animal, thus unexpectedly and basely assailed, found the pain to which he was suddenly subjected so great as to take away all power of resistance. He would not utter a cry, but sat down, and permitted the other dog to gnaw away at his tender foot without a single sign of suffering. As the cry of pain, the dog's "enough," was to terminate the battle, the fine fellow was permitted thus to suffer for several minutes, before the bystanders came ...
— Who Are Happiest? and Other Stories • T. S. Arthur
... ever," he muttered, "the pillars of Hercules. I must go on or perish. If I fall, I die execrated and abhorred; if I succeed, the sound of the choral flutes will drown the hootings. Be it as it may, I do not and will not repent. If the wolf gnaw my entrails, none shall hear me groan." He turned and met the eyes of Alcman, fixed on him so intently, so exultingly, that, wondering at their strange expression, he drew back and said haughtily, "You imitate Medusa, but I am ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton
... with a large bone. Jonas said that he was undoubtedly a dog that had lost his master, and had been wandering about to find him, until he became very hungry. So he said they would leave him in the yard to gnaw his bone, and that then he would probably go away. Josey wanted to shut him up and keep him, but Jonas said it ...
— Jonas on a Farm in Winter • Jacob Abbott
... Wordsworth probably said to Coleridge more than once. It was time for Lord Blight to forget these incidents of his eager and impetuous youth. Yet somehow he could not. Within the last few days his conscience had begun to gnaw him, and in his despair he told himself that at last the day of reckoning had come. Poor Blight! It is difficult to withhold ...
— The Sunny Side • A. A. Milne
... going to take advantage of the darkness for an advance against the fort. Oh dear! We shall have to lie here and listen to the firing soon. Val, I don't think I'd mind being shot in the morning if I could only warn the Colonel. Do you think you could gnaw through my rein?" ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn
... were did pretty much as they liked. Noah and his family in the ark, for instance, probably never set any tables or had any regular meals, but just ate when they were hungry, each one by himself. Savage tribes do the same to this day; they seize their bone or their handful of meat and gnaw it in a corner, or as they walk about. This was the primitive idea of comfort. But after a time people found that it was less trouble to have the family food made ready at a certain time for everybody at once, and have all come together to ...
— A Little Country Girl • Susan Coolidge
... angrily, and turned a suspicious eye on me. "The Hanover rat,—George!... And the blight works—oh, it works, and the brain rots in his head and the maggots gnaw at his heart. And they wonder why!... an effectual fervent curse!—Oh, it works! For years and years I've cursed him night and day and—you see! Keep him in the dark, they said. Let no man speak to him for a twelvemonth and a day, they said. And no man ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... on their shelves, Dressed in dim brown, and black, and white, and green, And every kind of colour. Which will you read? Come on; O do read something; they're so wise. I tell you all the wisdom of the world Is waiting for you on those shelves; and yet You sit and gnaw your nails, and let your pipe out, And listen to the silence: on the ceiling There's one big, dizzy moth that bumps and flutters; And in the breathless air outside the house The garden waits for something ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... went fishing together in a canoe in which they had taken a good supply of Indian corn. While the monkey was paddling the hare was eating up all the corn. When the corn had been entirely disposed of, in its irresistible desire to use its incisors, the hare began to gnaw the sides of the canoe. The monkey reprimanded the hare, and warned it that the canoe would sink, and as the hare was not a good swimmer it would probably get drowned, or be eaten by fish which swarmed in the stream. ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... they say my uncle grew so fast, That he could gnaw a crust at two hours old: 'Twas two full years ere ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... on plodded the hansom, going slower, it seemed to him, at each step. He thrust up the trap, and called to the man to drive faster. The hideous hunger for opium began to gnaw at him. His throat burned, and his delicate hands twitched nervously together. He struck at the horse madly with his stick. The driver laughed, and whipped up. He laughed in answer, ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... the man, cutting off large pieces of the pudding and passing it across the counter to the boys who took it, without speaking, and began to gnaw at ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... squirrel is acorns, nuts, and seeds and grain of all kinds, and it will sometimes nibble leaf-buds and tender shoots of young trees in the spring. Its teeth are so sharp and strong that it will gnaw the hardest nutshell. Nothing is prettier than to see this graceful creature sitting upright, its beautiful tail curled over its back, gnawing at a nut which it skillfully holds in its fore-paws. As it ...
— Harper's Young People, January 6, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... mice are apt to be busy and mischievous infesters of libraries. They are extremely fond of paste, and being in a chronic state of hunger, they watch opportunities of getting at any library receptacle of it. They will gnaw any fresh binding, whether of cloth, board, or leather, to get at the coveted food. They will also gnaw some books, and even pamphlets, without any apparent temptation of a succulent nature. A good library cat or a series ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... murmured Pierre wearily. "I get discouraged standing and hearing them gnaw those leaves. I know they are just making ...
— The Story of Silk • Sara Ware Bassett
... of silence she smiled and added, "I suppose a Freudian would carry off an admission like that to his cave and gnaw over ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... cruelly My little pretty sparrow That I brought up at Carowe. O cat of churlish kind, The fiend was in thy mind, When thou my bird untwined.* I would thou hadst been blind. The leopards savage, The lions in their rage, Might catch thee in their paws And gnaw thee in their jaws. ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... world to the streets of the Juroosalum; and my tex which I shall choose for the occasion is somewhar between the second Chronikills and the last chapter of Timothy Titus, and when found you will find it in these words: "And they shall gnaw a file, and flee unto the mountains of Hepsidam, whar the lion roareth and the whang-doodle ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett
... now, for his over-strained imagination had painted a fresh picture—that of the miserable-looking cur somewhere close at hand, settled down in a hollow to deliberately gnaw the sandy bone. For it was too much to expect of a dog that, after perhaps starving for eight-and-forty hours, it would leave the meal for which it hungered, and go and deliver such a message as that ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... they get their breakfast, consisting of half a dried fish or three biscuits apiece. The rest of the forenoon is spent in rooting round among all the refuse heaps they can find; and they gnaw and lick all the empty tin cases which they have ransacked hundreds of times before. If the cook sends a fresh tin dancing along the ice a battle immediately rages around the prize. It often happens that one or another of them, ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... for other women, there isn't one anywhere to whom I would say a word. Only think how a girl such as I am is placed; or indeed any girl. You, if you see a woman that you fancy, can pursue her, can win her and triumph, or lose her and gnaw your heart;—at any rate you can do something. You can tell her that you love her; can tell her so again and again even though she should scorn you. You can set yourself about the business you have taken in hand and can work hard at it. What ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... gallows, which the terrific minister lost no opportunity to place before his imagination; and occasionally despatched a Paris Gazette, which distilled the venom of Richelieu's heart, and which, like the eagle of Prometheus, could gnaw at the heart of the insulated politician ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... they soon followed, taking Peepsy and the dolls with them. The three dogs only remained under the cotton-wool tree, discussing the party very gravely, and wondering why it was that human beings never cared to gnaw bones. And so, rather sadly, ended ...
— Five Mice in a Mouse-trap - by the Man in the Moon. • Laura E. Richards
... like all young things, he was foolish. He liked to roll about, and was often destructive—he would gnaw the nets and skins, break the traps, and lick up the gunpowder. Then Demid punished him, whereupon Makar would turn on his heel, make foolish ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak
... him, dropping through a wedding ring into the clutching fingers of a new-born heir. And when it struck him that the beautiful vision he had feasted his eyes upon last evening was, undoubtedly, the fair destroyer of his every hope, a conflict of violent feelings began to gnaw at his poor heart, making a genuine picture of woeful misery out of the laughing face of a moment before, but he battled against his moral foes, at least—he must not show his uncle that any selfishness of his could mar the sincerity of ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... a body with out/ and within a soule/ sprite & life. It hath [with] out a barke/ a shell and as it were an hard bone for [the] fleshly mynded to gnaw vppon. And within it hath pith/ cornell/ mary & all swetnesse for Gods electe which he hath chosen to geve them his spirite/ & to write his law & [the] faith of his sonne in ...
— The prophete Ionas with an introduccion • William Tyndale
... Cat to climb a tree, and when he needed help to call out for him. Night coming on, water began to rise about the base of the tree, and the Giant Beaver came and began to gnaw at its base. The friendly ants[16] tried to keep the tree upright, but the water continued to rise and the Beaver kept on gnawing. Then the Black Cat in his sore dilemma called out, "Grandpa, come!" The grandfather responded, "I am coming; wait till I get my ...
— Contribution to Passamaquoddy Folk-Lore • J. Walter Fewkes
... among the mountains, where he and his friends often camped to eat their dinner during their hunting expeditions. Roderick stood close by, lazily cropping the grass, but Marmion was not in sight. The last time his master saw him, he was trying to gnaw his way into a hollow log where a rabbit had ...
— Frank Among The Rancheros • Harry Castlemon
... Slover commenced untying himself. Without much difficulty he loosened the cord from his arms, but the ligature around his neck, of undressed buffalo-hide, seemed to defy his exertions to remove it; and while he was endeavoring to gnaw it in vain, one of the sleeping Indians, rose up and going near to him, sat and smoked his pipe for some time. Slover lay perfectly still, apprehensive that all chance of escape was now lost to him. But no—the Indian again composed himself to sleep, and the first ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... his Bible this passage: 'As the worm gnaweth the garment and rottenness the wood, so doth the weariness of solitude gnaw the heart ...
— The Solitary of Juan Fernandez, or The Real Robinson Crusoe • Joseph Xavier Saintine
... competition among the labourers for a dead pig or sheep; it was the cobbler's turn, and he had it, cut it up, and salted it down. But when in course of time he came to partake of his side of bacon, behold it was so tough and dried up that even he could not gnaw it. The side hung in the cottage for months, for he did not like to throw it away, and could not think what to do with it, for the dogs could not eat it. At last the old fellow hit upon the notion of using it as ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies
... a loop-hole for escape, and thereby preserved his reputation. The aggageers expected to find our wounded elephants on the following morning, if dead, by the flights of vultures. That night the lions again serenaded us with constant roaring, as they had still some bones to gnaw of ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... mother in the past. But month succeeded month, and she for ever disappointed me, and at last I abandoned hope. In solitude and exile Mercedes degenerated sadly; got monstrously fat; too indolent to gnaw, let her teeth grow to a preposterous length; and in the end died of ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland
... progressing before he started off. A fire had already been started, and the cheery flames did much toward dispelling the feeling of gloom that had begun to gnaw at their hearts. There is nothing in the world better calculated to dissipate worry and liven things up than a genuine camp-fire. It seems to dissipate doubt, give the heart something to grip, and in every way make ...
— Afloat on the Flood • Lawrence J. Leslie
... whoever prefers to die, let him call the priest—that's all! I want to live and fight! Of what use is the Bernardine? Are we schoolboys? What do I care for that Robak? Now we will all be Robaks, that is, worms, and proceed to gnaw at the Muscovites! Hem, haw! spies! to explore! Do you know what that means? Why, that you are impotent old beggars! Hey, brothers! It is a setter's work to follow a trail, a Bernardine's to gather alms, but my work is—to sprinkle, sprinkle, ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... mouse dares gnaw At the silence dead and dumb, And the very air seems waiting For ...
— The Haunted Hour - An Anthology • Various
... give me my bucket o' molasses, an' I carried it on to the house. They went down to the lot, turned out all the horses an' tuck two o' the big mules, Kentucky mules, an' carried 'em off. One of the mules would gnaw every line in two you tied him with, an' the other could not be rode. So next morning after the Yankees carried 'em off they both come back home with pieces o' lines on 'em. The mules was named, one was named Bill, an' the other Charles. You could ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States • Various
... abrade, fray, rub; gnaw, corrode; roughen, ruffle, agitate; worry, harass, tease, irritate, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... as the ice begins to freeze in the autumn, the seals gnaw holes in it to reach the air, and they keep these holes open all winter. It freezes so fast in that cold country that they have to be busy almost every minute all through the winter breaking away the ice there. They get their sleep ...
— The Eskimo Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... do your best, I am sure," he said; "and, depend upon it, I do not intend to be killed like a rat in a hole, but shall try to gnaw my way out. You had better not stay much longer, or some of those fellows may possibly recognise you. Bestow a gold piece or two on me, if you have any to spare; in truth, I am greatly in need of money, as every ...
— In New Granada - Heroes and Patriots • W.H.G. Kingston
... not mathematics that are to blame if he is grave and absorbed," said the vicar, with a sigh; "it is the two cares that gnaw most,—poverty and ambition." ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Black Cat to climb a tree, and when he needed help to call out for him. Night coming on, water began to rise about the base of the tree, and the Giant Beaver came and began to gnaw at its base. The friendly ants[16] tried to keep the tree upright, but the water continued to rise and the Beaver kept on gnawing. Then the Black Cat in his sore dilemma called out, "Grandpa, come!" The grandfather responded, "I am coming; ...
— Contribution to Passamaquoddy Folk-Lore • J. Walter Fewkes
... have no idea of. He knows how a roost of poultry looks at morning dusk, when, if you enter the barn, the entire roost turns one eye at you, and then for an unknown cause simultaneously shakes its head. He knows how hens catch mice in the hay-mow—how they gnaw the sucking pigs' tails to the bone (the hired man says they need the meat). He knows how to obtain bumblebees' honey, paying for this information with an ear like a garnet potato, one of the sort that "biles ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... seal blubber, he would rush on the scent and greedily swallow whatever was offered. When he realised the sad truth that a huge hook with a strong barb was hidden inside this tempting dish and that it was no easy matter to disgorge the tasty morsel, he would try to gnaw through the shaft of the hook with his teeth. Very occasionally he might succeed, but usually his efforts failed. Attached to the book was a length of strong iron chain; and sometimes, though defeated by the hook, he would manage to snip through the chain. Then, in his joy at being ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... sleep. All the danger was inside, and it was also inside of that mule. He was hungry and vicious. He had lived in the white "settlements," and knew something. He was fastened by a long hide lariat to a peg driven into the ground, as were all the others, and he knew that the best place to gnaw in two that lariat was close to the peg, where he could get a good pull upon it. As soon as he had freed himself he tried the lariat of another mule, and found that the peg had been driven into loose earth and came right up. That was a scientific discovery, ...
— Two Arrows - A Story of Red and White • William O. Stoddard
... their teeth against the stones, And now they pick the bishop's bones; They gnaw'd the flesh from every limb, For they were sent ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various
... he left them open and the house was robbed, the police would not only blame him severely, but would not take any trouble to recover his property. He had no rice, so I indulged in a feast of delicious cucumbers. I never saw so many eaten as in that district. Children gnaw them all day long, and even babies on their mothers' backs suck them with avidity. Just now they are sold for a sen ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... the two. My son remarks: "It is difficult to say how the bees could have acquired this habit. Whether they discovered the inequality in the size of the nectar-holes in sucking the flowers in the proper way, and then utilised this knowledge in determining where to gnaw the hole; or whether they found out the best situation by biting through the standard at various points, and afterwards remembered its situation in visiting other flowers. But in either case they show a remarkable power of making use of what they have learnt by experience." It seems probable ...
— The Effects of Cross & Self-Fertilisation in the Vegetable Kingdom • Charles Darwin
... sighs of sweet sound, vibrated from rock to river and back again from depth to depth of cave and cliff. Her thought flew after it; she knew, that, even if her husband heard it, he yet could not reach her in time; she saw that while the beast listened he would not gnaw,—and this she felt directly, when the rough, sharp, and multiplied stings of his tongue retouched her arm. Again her lips opened by instinct, but the sound that issued thence came by reason. She had heard that music charmed ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... and Prue and Agatha Are thick with Mig and Joan! They bite their threads and shake their heads And gnaw ...
— A Few Figs from Thistles • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... the stratum which the Negro occupies, the race is an easy prey to disease that affects the health of the whole nation. The germs of disease have no race prejudice. They do not even draw the line at social equality, but gnaw with equal avidity at the vitals of white and black alike, and pass with the greatest freedom of intercourse from the one to the other. One touch of disease makes the whole world kin, and also kind. The Negro physician comes into ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... in that sound, Enough to turn me into beef indeed! Yes, I will own, since licensed by your word, I'll own Tom Thumb the cause of all my grief. For him I've sigh'd, I've wept, I've gnaw'd my sheets. ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... again with a large bone. Jonas said that he was undoubtedly a dog that had lost his master, and had been wandering about to find him, until he became very hungry. So he said they would leave him in the yard to gnaw his bone, and that then he would probably go away. Josey wanted to shut him up and keep him, but Jonas said it ...
— Jonas on a Farm in Winter • Jacob Abbott
... the jaws of his race. This would have been a laudable thing in a man, but it was far more so in a mouse, belonging to a tribe who live for themselves alone, barefacedly and shamelessly, and in order to gratify themselves would defile a consecrated wafer, gnaw a priest's stole without shame, and would drink out of a Communion cup, caring nothing for God. The mouse advanced with many a bow and scrape, and the shrew-mouse let him advance rather near—for, to tell the truth, these animals are naturally short-sighted. Then ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... It very soon gave her great comfort, however, to see that Marilla, Rowens had just missed it in her calculations, and she chuckled immensely to find Dudley Veneer devoting himself chiefly to Helen Darley. If the Rowens woman should hook Dudley, she felt as if she should gnaw all her nails off for spite. To think of seeing her barouching about Rockland behind a pair of long-tailed bays and a coachman with a band on his hat, while she, Blanche Creamer, was driving herself about in a one-horse "carriage"! Recovering her spirits by degrees, she began playing ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... of valerian, being said to dig up the roots and gnaw them to pieces, an allusion to which occurs in Topsell's "Four-footed Beasts" (1658-81):—"The root of the herb valerian (commonly called Phu) is very like to the eye of a cat, and wheresoever it groweth, if cats come thereunto they instantly dig it up for the love thereof, as I myself ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... Puff up to the house in his arms, they soon followed, taking Peepsy and the dolls with them. The three dogs only remained under the cotton-wool tree, discussing the party very gravely, and wondering why it was that human beings never cared to gnaw bones. And so, rather sadly, ended ...
— Five Mice in a Mouse-trap - by the Man in the Moon. • Laura E. Richards
... do—there was no need to say that. She coaxed him and petted him and caressed him, and laid the memory of that old hard speech of his to rest. Laid it to rest until she should be dead. Then he would remember it again—yes, yes! Lord, how those things sting, and burn, and gnaw—the things which we did against the innocent dead! And we say in our anguish, "If they could only come back!" Which is all very well to say, but, as far as I can see, it doesn't profit anything. ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc Volume 2 • Mark Twain
... of the iris in the green meadows where the sheep graze, Lord of the fruit the worms gnaw and of the hut the whirlwind shatters, your breath gives life to the fire in the hearth, your warmth ripens the tawny grain, and your holy hand, St. John's eve, hardens the stone of ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... the masque at my house where first the King did see her. It was I that advised her how to bear herself. And what gratitude has been shown me? I have been sent to sequester myself in my see; I have been set to gnaw my fingers as they had been old bones thrown to a dog. Truly, no juicy meats have been my share. Yet it was I set ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford
... had not moved. She did not move now, but sat the picture of hard, haughty despair—a despair that would gnaw body and soul, yet give no sigh. But the cavaliere was now too much absorbed by Enrica's sufferings to affect even to take ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... and gambling, two vices of which the Americans were ignorant in the time of the founders of their great federation, have taken very deep root. The decrease of the inflexible spirit of religion, and the increase of vice and luxury, gnaw the powerful tree, and are fearful enemies, which cannot be resisted by a structure that might resist with scorn all foreign foes, and would have played a mighty part in the world's history had the spirit of Washington and Franklin remained with it. The annexation of Texas, ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 9. - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 26, 1850 • Various
... materials are all at hand; and, besides, when once built it lasts for years. Then, again, it is not only cheaper, but it is more deadly than the steel trap, for once the animal is caught, it seldom escapes. With the steel trap it is different, as animals often pull away from the steel jaws or even gnaw off a foot in order to get free. If, however, the hunter's deadfalls and traps have been set in vain, and if the wolf has been causing trouble and the hunter is determined to secure him, he will sit up for him at night ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... said at last, quietly. "The worn old heart can gnaw on itself a little longer. I have no mind to whimper ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... the work of ruin more thoroughly. For not only the crops and fruits, but the foliage of the forest itself, nay, the small twigs and the bark of the trees are the victims of their curious and energetic rapacity. They have been known even to gnaw the door-posts of the houses. Nor do they execute their task in so slovenly a way, that, as they have succeeded other plagues so they may have successors themselves. They take pains to spoil what they leave. Like the Harpies, they smear every thing that they touch with a miserable slime, ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... there, at least, he is free to profess the truth he had found, and to be one of the instances—very rare indeed they are—of a consistent and steady Protestant, who had for years before been thoroughly imbued with those doctrines which gnaw at the very vitals of mental perception, and obliterate the sense of fairness, and which very seldom leave enough alive in the mind to hold ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... Golden-skin, "and my teeth are weak—how can I gnaw so much? No! no! I will nibble your strings as long as my teeth last, and afterwards do my best for the others. To preserve dependents by sacrificing oneself is nowhere enjoined by wise moralists; on ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... A nameless fear began to gnaw at Wilmot's vitals. And at that moment the door swung open, and he saw, beyond the bulking head and shoulders of the legless man, a narrow iron table, white and shining, in a room ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris
... with four facades, six feet higher, and more gorgeous hangings. Then he would fall back on his reserves, his strong point, his specialty—masses with bombs and fireworks; whereat Dona Patrocinia could only gnaw at her lips with her toothless gums, because, being exceedingly nervous, she could not endure the chiming of the bells and still less the explosions of the bombs. While he smiled in triumph, she would plan her revenge and pay the money of others to secure the best orators ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... had given you the slip, eh? Didn't think I'd show up here and do my part? Well, I don't blame you; I suppose I've acted like a damned idiot, but so long as it turns out O.K. there's no harm done. The wolf won't gnaw very much of a hole in your door, I reckon. This letter introduces my secretary, Mr. Oliver Harrison. He came to me last June, out in Butte, with the prospectus of a claim he had staked out up in the mountains. What he wanted was backing ...
— Brewster's Millions • George Barr McCutcheon
... said the rat, 'gnaw your own tail;' and off he went laughing at the joke. The miserable weasel cried and sniffed, and sniffed and cried, till by-and-by he heard the rat come back and begin to scratch outside. Presently the rat stopped, and was going away again, ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... the occasion and take hold of the grub. The legs of this third segment only are paralysed; the others retain their usual mobility. However helpless in the two injured legs, the animal can walk very well; it buries itself in the earth, returning to the surface at night to gnaw the stump of lettuce with which I have served it. For a fortnight my paralytic retains perfect liberty of action, except in the segment operated on; then it dies, not of its wound but accidentally. All this time the ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... declared that he was not hungry. He went to the window and, pulling back the curtain, stared out into the night. Was all the rest of life going to be like this? Was that restless, nervous, intolerable pain going to gnaw at ...
— Sandy • Alice Hegan Rice
... look into the future. Should you die, O King, the lands will be desolate; but for me, the kahuna, the name will live on from one generation to another; but my death will be before thine, and when I am up on the heaven-feared altar then my words will gnaw thee, O King, and the rains and the sun ...
— Hawaiian Folk Tales - A Collection of Native Legends • Various
... his love for my mother; speaking of himself throughout as Rene might, as of her humble devoted servant merely. And then the question began to gnaw at me. "Did she love him?" and somehow, I felt as if I could not rest till I knew; and I had it on my lips twenty times to cry out to him: "I know you loved her: oh! tell me, did she love you?" And yet I dared no more have done so, and overstepped the barrier of his gentle, reticent ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... again, and drew the tobacco sack shut with his teeth. "He wouldn't 'gnaw' you—he wouldn't have come near you. He's whip trained. And I'd have been there myself ...
— Chip, of the Flying U • B. M. Bower
... got to the tree, he found that the weight and strain had dragged the knot so tight that it was past untying. He was obliged to gnaw it with his teeth. He chewed and gnawed for more than twenty minutes. At last the rope gave way with such a sudden jerk that it nearly pulled his teeth out, and ...
— A Collection of Beatrix Potter Stories • Beatrix Potter
... buzz of conversation going on—there always is; but at last, when the Rev. Mr. Burgess rose and laid his hand on the sack, he could hear his microbes gnaw, the place was so still. He related the curious history of the sack, then went on to speak in warm terms of Hadleyburg's old and well-earned reputation for spotless honesty, and of the town's just pride in this reputation. He said that this reputation ...
— The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg • Mark Twain
... wretched and miserable. I shall ne'er recover of this disease: hot Iron gnaw their fists! they have struck a Fever into my shoulder, which I shall ne'er shake out again, I fear me, till with a true Habeas Corpus the Sexton remove me. Oh, if I take prison once, I shall be pressed to death with Actions, but not so happy as ...
— The Puritain Widow • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... from the Major, then from Bruce. They, too, had seen. It was too late now, for their landing wheels were almost touching the surface as they glided on. And now, strangely enough, some of the gray streaks began to chase the plane. As if imagining it a bird with flesh to eat and bones to gnaw, they came on. Then, all at once, Barney realized what they followed—the scent of fresh meat. Timmie had killed a reindeer in honor of their departure and had presented them with a hind-quarter. This was now ...
— Lost In The Air • Roy J. Snell
... cat, which attacked Panurge, and which he mistook for "a young, soft-chinned devil." The word means "gnaw-lard" (Latin, rod[)e]re ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... bloom. Each female is supposed to lay about fifty eggs which are deposited on both the leaves and fruit, but mostly on the calyx end of the young apples. The eggs hatch in about a week and the young larvae or caterpillars begin at once to gnaw their way into the core of the fruit. Three-fourths of them enter the apple through its ...
— Apple Growing • M. C. Burritt
... be feasting in the lodges of the Iroquois, And scalps will hang on the high ridge pole, But wolves will roam where the Yengees dwelt And will gnaw the bones of them all, Of the man, the woman, and the child. Victory and glory Aieroski gives to his children, The Mighty Six Nations, ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler
... Thunder strike thee dead for this deceit, immediate lightning blast thee, me, and the whole world! Oh! I could rack myself, play the vulture to my own heart, and gnaw it piecemeal, for not boding to ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... not yield to John Barleycorn while working in the laundry, a certain definite result was produced. I had heard the call, felt the gnaw of desire, yearned for the anodyne. I was being prepared for the ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... liking to eat insects and their grubs or their eggs, he is also very fond of some kinds of nuts, like beech and chestnuts," said the Doctor, "and he may be obliged to live entirely upon them in winter, when insects fail him. Having no teeth to gnaw and crack them open as squirrels do, he takes a nut in his claws and either holding it thus, or jamming it tight into a crack in the bark, then uses his bill for a hatchet to split or hack the nut open. I have seen the bird crack hard ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... no tortures more bitter than those which quietly gnaw at your heart every day, waste your breast, and ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky
... there, and in a moment, as she expected, the cautious steps went by her on their quest, a party of eight or ten, as she judged, raising her head cautiously from her retreat to look and listen. Then she lay down again, chuckling softly as she did when the mouse escaped, even though it was to gnaw her cheese. And presently she took the road, and so ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... brother Jacinto, or brother Raimundo: all monks and friars, proceeding, that is to say, from the monastic orders." "These," he added, "are the orange-trees of heaven, whose fruits are placed on the table of God." Of evil-speakers Rodaja said, that they were like the feathers of the eagle which gnaw, wear away, and reduce to nothing, whatever feathers of other birds are mingled with them in beds or cushions, how good soever those feathers ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... not come home and have a bit of supper with us? That is, if there is any. But come round, and gnaw the old hambone—what? I think we got some claret and I know George's got a drop of Three-Star. Young Beryl's off to-morrow on the Northern tour with the White Bird Company, so of course we're in a devil of muddle. George's ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... Teddy, "we can do that. I wonder if Slider can do any tricks?" he asked, when Top had been rewarded for his efforts with a little bone to gnaw. ...
— The Curlytops and Their Pets - or Uncle Toby's Strange Collection • Howard R. Garis
... highest point of the crags at the uttermost end of the island. On the side towards the sea the rock was once rent sheer away in some globe-cataclysm; it rises up a straight wall from the base where the waves gnaw at the stone below high-water mark. Any assault is made impossible by the dangerous reefs that stretch far out to sea, with the sparkling waves of the Mediterranean playing over them. So, only from the sea can you discern the square mass of the convent ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... I shall not go into details. There are enough unpleasant things in this world without telling about that. They must have wandered around for at least a day and a half, and in all that while they had not a drop of water, and not a thing to eat. Wait, though, at last in their desperation they did gnaw the tallow candles, and that served to keep them alive, and, in a measure, alleviate ...
— Tom Swift and his Air Glider - or, Seeking the Platinum Treasure • Victor Appleton
... watching the brilliant sparks that ever and anon flew up the chimney. But ere long it scented the well-flavoured viand that dangled in the vicinity, and after casting a glance at the face of Joe, and being satisfied that he was insensible to all external objects, stealthily began to gnaw the end of the bone that rested on the hearth. As long as it had in mind the fear of interruption, it was permitted to feast moderately; but when its ravenous propensity urged it to more active and vigorous operations, Joe once ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... willing to live in the swamps, and gnaw the bark from trees. I an't afraid of snakes! I'd rather have one near me ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... silk-worms. The trays were filled with dead leaves, which the poor insects crawled over, vainly endeavouring to find a piece sufficiently moist to satisfy their craving appetite. From thence I went to the rabbits, and found them without victuals, and so hungry that they had begun to gnaw the belts of the hutches. I inquired for Emma, but was some time before I could discover where she was. At length I found her very busy in making a garden with her brother George, so much taken ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... beats all the rest—ha, ha! he is a superior wretch—he commands the tribe, and will venture the first into the trap. How will he bite against the steel, the fine fellow! while all the ignobler herd will gaze at him afar off, and quake and fear, and never help. Yet if united, they might gnaw the trap and release their leader! Ah, ye are base vermin, ye eat my bread, yet if death came upon me, ye would riot on my carcass. Away!" and clapping his hands, the chain round him clanked harshly, and the noisome co-mates of his dungeon ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... purpose could be kept hidden from the ever-alert Le Loutre. Since Beaubassin was on British soil, no armed opposition could be made to the landing of the British force; and the troops on Beausejour could only gnaw their mustaches and gaze in angry silence. But Le Loutre was resolved that on the arrival of the British there should be no more Beaubassin. The villagers were not to remain in ...
— The Raid From Beausejour; And How The Carter Boys Lifted The Mortgage • Charles G. D. Roberts
... always came, even when you had been most wicked: when you were sent to bed without even the supper-crust to gnaw, and when your body and arms and legs were bruised and aching from the beating they told you you deserved. The stars would go a long way off, and while you tingled and trembled and panted with expectation, would come back again as eyes. Looking up into them, you saw them clearly; the rest ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... turned all red and paced his hall, Now gnaw'd his under, now his upper lip, And coming up close to her, said at last: "Girl, for I see ye scorn my courtesies, Take warning: yonder man is surely dead; And I compel all creatures to my will. Not eat nor drink? And wherefore wail for one, Who put your beauty to ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... hidden mouse dares gnaw At the silence dead and dumb, And the very air seems waiting For ...
— The Haunted Hour - An Anthology • Various
... all, of the figures on this plate (Tro. 29) are intended to represent the injurious and destructive agencies to which maize and other cultivated plants were subject. Birds and quadrupeds pull up the sprouting seed and pull down and devour the ripening grain; worms gnaw the roots and winds break down the stalks, one out of four escaping injury and giving full return to the planter. The latter is therefore probably the correct interpretation, the only difficult feature being the presence of the Earth god, ...
— Day Symbols of the Maya Year • Cyrus Thomas
... of little courtesies which brought back civilization to their thoughts, even though life had gone back to primitive things with just life and death, hunger and thirst, love and courage, as the laws of existence. The man who had a corkscrew could command respect. A lady with gold-spun hair could gnaw a chicken bone without any loss of beauty. The chauffeurs munched solidly, making cockney jokes out of full mouths and abolishing all distinctions of caste by their comradeship in great adventures ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... the ruins in silence. He tried to gnaw the ends of his mustache. His eyes changed from amusement to contempt, and then to interest. I was ready for ...
— Riviera Towns • Herbert Adams Gibbons
... I have made, I ghess to contain it, and become, as it were a womb to it, so long, till it be fit and prepar'd to be translated into another state, at what time, like (what they say of) Vipers, they gnaw their way through the womb that bred them; divers of these kinds I have met with upon Goosberry leaves, Rose-tree leaves, Willow ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... there be fresh-baked bread in the regimental ovens yonder, fetch a loaf, in God's name. I could gnaw black-birch and reindeer moss, so famished am I—and the Sagamore, too, no doubt, could rattle a flam with ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... tight-lipped. He had seen all! This was the secret of Mistress Rebecca's new-found diligence. No syllable was uttered, but it was the awfullest silence that ever a lad heard. I was lifted rather than led upstairs and left a prisoner in locked room with naught to do but gnaw my conscience and gaze at the woods skirting the crests of the ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... world. The fierce robbers come down from the mountains, and carry off the little children, and sell them to the Moors. The lions lie in wait for the caravans, and leap upon the camels. The wild boar roots up the corn in the valley, and the foxes gnaw the vines upon the hill. The pirates lay waste the sea-coast and burn the ships of the fishermen, and take their nets from them. In the salt-marshes live the lepers; they have houses of wattled reeds, and none may come nigh them. ...
— Selected Prose of Oscar Wilde - with a Preface by Robert Ross • Oscar Wilde
... the bones are in their natural position. In other caves, the thorax and the vertebrae of the skeletons were missing; the cave-man, having despatched his victim, bad evidently taken only the more succulent parts into his retreat. Beasts of prey merely gnaw the comparatively tender and spongy tops of the bones, leaving the hard, compact parts untouched. In the caves that were inhabited by man, however, we find the apophyses neglected, whilst the diaphyses are split open. We ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... would go through and then try to pull them after him. All night he or his companion seems to have kept up this futile attempt, fumbling and dropping the nut every few minutes. It never occurred to the mouse to gnaw the hole larger, as it would instantly have done had the hole been too small to admit its own body. It could not project its mind thus far; it could not get out of itself sufficiently to regard the ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... the set in which he had been thrown. He had resolved to return to France,—he would try for a more respectable mode of existence. He had not found happiness in that liberty he had won, nor room for the ambition that began to gnaw him, in those pursuits from which his father had vainly warned him. His most reputable friend was his old tutor; he would go to him. He went; but the tutor was now married, and was himself a father,—and that made a wonderful ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... sullen, frumpish fool, That loves to be oppression's tool, May envy gnaw his rotten soul, And discontent devour him; May dool and sorrow be his chance, Dool and sorrow, dool and sorrow, Dool and sorrow be his chance, And nane say, Wae 's me for him! May dool and sorrow be his chance, Wi' a' the ills ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... awful awaking from some weird possession or suggestion of evil by a stronger mind, Guy Waring began to walk on in a feverish fashion, fast, fast, oh, so fast, not knowing where he went, but conscious only that he must keep moving, lest an accusing conscience should gnaw his very ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... of confinement several times; but not the least crack or opening could we discover, except through the bars, which being of iron, it was impossible for us to break or bend. At length we determined to try to gnaw through the wood-work close at the edge, which being already some little distance from one of the bars, we hoped, by making the opening a little wider, he would escape: accordingly we all began, he on the inside, and we all on the out, and by our diligence had made some very considerable progress, ...
— The Life and Perambulations of a Mouse • Dorothy Kilner
... horses escaped. Even after he was put in chains and kept under the General's eye on the way to Quivira, now and then there would be a horse, usually a mare with a colt, who slipped her stake-rope. Little gray coyotes came in the night and gnawed them. But coyotes will not gnaw a rope unless it has been well rubbed with buffalo ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al
... especially That slew so cruelly My little pretty sparrow That I brought up at Carowe. O cat of churlish kind, The fiend was in thy mind, When thou my bird untwined.* I would thou hadst been blind. The leopards savage, The lions in their rage, Might catch thee in their paws And gnaw thee in their jaws. ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... back before harvest to drive the Yanks across the river, and get Sandy and Loker out of Fort Niagara," said Zenas. "Tom would gnaw his very fetters off to get free, if he wore any. But Sandy takes everything as it comes, as cool as you please. 'It was all appointed,' he says, and 'all ...
— Neville Trueman the Pioneer Preacher • William Henry Withrow
... I cannot helpe it; for I am threatned to be hang'd if I set but a Tripe before you or give you a bone to gnaw. ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various
... home to her burrow. She was so near that the Child could have touched her by reaching out his hand. But she took no more notice of him than if he had been a rotten stump. Less, in fact, for she might have tried to gnaw into him if he had been a rotten stump, in the hope ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... House of Commons added to the difficulties of the Government, as Mr. Bonar Law had complained in March. It was to placate them that the Convention had been summoned. It was a bone thrown to a snarling dog, and the longer there was anything to gnaw the longer would the dog keep quiet. The Ulster delegates understood this perfectly, and, as their chief desire was to help the Government to get on with the war, they had no wish to curtail the proceedings of the Convention, although they were never under the delusion ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill
... long ago deserting the garden neighborhood, feed at eventide in flocks upon the bloody berries of the sumac; and the soft-eyed pigeons dispute possession of the feast. The squirrels chatter at sunrise, and gnaw off the full-grown burrs of the chestnuts. The lazy blackbirds skip after the loitering cow, watchful of the crickets that her slow steps start to danger. The crows in companies caw aloft, and hang high over the carcass of some slaughtered sheep ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... camp was a melancholy sight: the Europeans surly because they had discussed a bottle of cognac when they should have slept; the good Sayyid without his coffee, and perhaps without his prayers; Wakl Mohammed sorrowfully attempting to gnaw tooth-breaking biscuit; and the Bedawin working and walking like somnambules. However, at 5.10 a.m. we struck north, over a low divide of trap hill, by a broad and evidently made road, and regained the Wady el-Kubbah: here it is a pleasant spectacle rich ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 2 • Richard Burton
... satisfied my hunger with it during these disastrous days when the briars have turned into rose-colored crystals, and when the agile wagtail utters its shrill cry toward the larvae which its beak can no longer reach beneath the ice along the banks. I shall continue to gnaw these barks. For, Oh Francis, I do not wish to die with these gentle friends who are in their agony, but rather I wish to live beside you and obtain my sustenance from the bitter fiber ...
— Romance of the Rabbit • Francis Jammes
... bounce, he sat down in a disconsolate manner, poked as much as he could of his nose through one of the meshes, and sniggered at Little Tim, who during these outbursts was naturally in a state of great excitement. Then the bear went to work leisurely to gnaw the mesh close ...
— The Prairie Chief • R.M. Ballantyne
... the door, but at that he turned. "If ye care to sail agin' that wind, an' gnaw on that bone, I'd not be ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... a bunch of yaller dogs think they can put me out of office in this town they'll find they're tryin' to gnaw the wrong ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... more because the mouse would not stay still. It ran right toward me, and I naturally jumped, as anybody would; but I am not afraid of mice, and when the horrid thing ran up inside the leg of my pantaloons, I yelled to Maria because I was afraid it would gnaw a hole in my garment. There is something real disagreeable about having a mouse inside the leg of one's pantaloons, especially if there is nothing between you and the mouse. Its toes are cold, and its nails are scratchy, and its fur tickles, and its tail feels crawly, and there is ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... had been gnawed fully ten feet from the ground. This puzzled me. Squirrels could not have done it, nor rabbits, nor birds. Presently I hit upon the solution. The bark and boughs of this particular sapling were food for deer, and to gnaw so high the deer must have stood upon six or seven feet ...
— The Young Forester • Zane Grey
... and trivial flattery, his foully pimpled face within a foot of hers, and she shrinking before him, very white and mute and frightened. Her father looked on with darkling brows, and Giuliana began to gnaw her lip and look less lazy, whilst in the courtly background there was a respectful murmuring babble, supplying a sycophantic chorus to ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... lament of a nation stricken by the hand of God. What wailing! The King, the Queen, their first-born son, all the dignitaries of the kingdom are sighing; they are wounded in their pride, in their conquests; checked in their avarice. Dear Rossini! you have done well to throw this bone to gnaw to the Tedeschi, who declared we had no ...
— Massimilla Doni • Honore de Balzac
... turned a suspicious eye on me. "The Hanover rat,—George!... And the blight works—oh, it works, and the brain rots in his head and the maggots gnaw at his heart. And they wonder why!... an effectual fervent curse!—Oh, it works! For years and years I've cursed him night and day and—you see! Keep him in the dark, they said. Let no man speak to him for a twelvemonth ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... let me grasp that hated, damned viper, that would gnaw the heart's core of Bertha. Give me the key of your misery; O! bless me—bless your Bertha; give me those accursed manuscripts, daggers bequeathed you by a false friend, that I may at once, in your presence, give them to the flames; and Bertha, the ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... and instinctive faculties for accomplishing the final act of its metamorphosis, namely, the act of emerging from the cocoon and from the cell. Its mandibles provide it with scissors, file, pick-axe and lever wherewith to cut, gnaw through and demolish either its cocoon and its mortar enclosure or any other not too obstinate barrier substituted for the natural covering of the nest. Moreover—and this is an important proviso, except for which the outfit would be useless—it has, I will not say the will ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... was another thing which aroused Freya's enthusiasm. If they should have to endure more than a year of enclosure in the Aquarium, they would become sick with sadness and would gnaw their claws until they ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... had penetrated 500 miles when the severity of the weather compelled him to wait for a less severe temperature. He had had a terrible experience. At one time to have, indeed, more game than can be eaten; but more often to have no food whatever, and be compelled for a week at a time to gnaw old leather, pick bones which had been thrown aside, or to seek, often in vain, for a few berries on the trees; and lastly, to endure fearful cold—such is the life of an explorer in these ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... did drain; High on the beach his galleys drew, And feasted all his pirate crew; Then in his low and pine-built hall, Where shields and axes deck'd the wall, They gorged upon the half-dress'd steer; Caroused in seas of sable beer; While round, in brutal jest, were thrown The half-gnaw'd rib, and marrow bone: Or listen'd all, in grim delight. While Scalds yell'd out the joys of fight. Then forth, in frenzy, would they hie, While wildly-loose their red locks fly, And dancing round the blazing pile, They make such barbarous mirth the while, As best might to ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... out on the stones, He gnaw'd her sinews, crack'd her bones; He munch'd her heart, he quaff'd her gore, And up her lights ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... with his kisses, and she looked upon Othello, and she saw him gnaw his under lip, and roll his eyes, and she knew he was always fatal when he looked so: and he bade her prepare for death, and to say her prayers, for he would not kill her soul. And this innocent wife, as she lay at his mercy, begged for compassion, and to know her fault, ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... this another vision saw, In France, at Aix, in his Chapelle once more, That his right arm an evil bear did gnaw; Out of Ardennes he saw a leopard stalk, His body dear did savagely assault; But then there dashed a harrier from the hall, Leaping in the air he sped to Charles call, First the right ear of that grim bear he caught, And furiously ...
— The Song of Roland • Anonymous
... length of time to wear them down by eating. It is for this reason that rats and mice have such incessant appetites, and that with them "all is fish that comes to the net;" old books, rags, and even planks of wood, which they will gnaw for want of something better. Come what may, they must keep up at an equal rate the wear and tear of the incisors, and the internal growth of the pulp beneath, which is always pushing the tooth forward. ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... if I am growing as strong as a horse again. Why, comrade, it was worth getting as hungry, thirsty, and tired as that, so as to enjoy such a meal. I don't mean speaking for you, because I know you must be feeling that gnaw, gnaw, grinding pain in your wound. But do go on eating, and when you have had enough you shut-up shop and go off to sleep. Then I will ask that old chap to give me a bit of rag and let me wash and tie up your wound. I say, comrade, I hope he didn't see ...
— !Tention - A Story of Boy-Life during the Peninsular War • George Manville Fenn
... ruin huge He lieth by the narrow strait of sea, Crushed at the root of Etna's mountain-pile. High on the pinnacles whereof there sits Hephaestus, sweltering at the forge; and thence On some hereafter day shall burst and stream The lava-floods, that shall with ravening fangs Gnaw thy smooth lowlands, fertile Sicily! Such ire shall Typho from his living grave Send seething up, such jets of fiery surge, Hot and unslaked, altho' himself be laid In quaking ashes by Zeus' thunderbolt. But thou dost know hereof, ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus
... I won't," he began, then, feebly surrendering to the gnaw of desire, he reached hastily for the glass, as if in fear ...
— A Son Of The Sun • Jack London
... glass of agwa with yellow." Branch's voice shook. "I'm dying of a fever, and this ivory-billed toucan brings me a quart of poison. Bullets!" It was impossible to describe the suggestion of profanity with which the speaker colored this innocuous expletive. "Weak as I am, I shall gnaw his windpipe." He bared his teeth suggestively and raised two talon- ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... day was terrible. The violent pangs of hunger began to gnaw like vultures, and the thirst was still more intolerable; the pangs of hunger intermitted for hours at a time, and then returned to intermit again: they exhausted but did not infuriate; but the rage of thirst ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... little as he could hear of what passed. But the dinner seemed to go merrily; there was a perpetual babble of voices and sound of knives and forks below the chestnut; and Francis, who had no more than a roll to gnaw, was affected with envy by the comfort and deliberation of the meal. The party lingered over one dish after another, and then over a delicate dessert, with a bottle of old wine carefully uncorked by the hand of the Dictator ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the grounds being weedy and littered with bleached bones and other rubbish: fences and ditches had also been destroyed and obliterated, so that the cattle were free to rub their hides on the tree trunks and gnaw at the bark. The estancia was called Canada Seca, from a sluggish muddy stream near the house which almost invariably dried up in summer; in winter after heavy rains it overflowed its low banks, and in very wet seasons lake-like ponds of water were formed all over the low-lying plain ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... in dim brown, and black, and white, and green, And every kind of colour. Which will you read? Come on; O do read something; they're so wise. I tell you all the wisdom of the world Is waiting for you on those shelves; and yet You sit and gnaw your nails, and let your pipe out, And listen to the silence: on the ceiling There's one big, dizzy moth that bumps and flutters; And in the breathless air outside the house The garden waits for something ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... is the best policy," we speak abstractly. Nobody can see or hear or touch the thing honesty or the thing policy; the apprehension of them must be purely intellectual. But if we say "The rat began to gnaw the rope," we speak concretely. Rat, gnaw, and rope are tangible, perceptible things; the words bring to us visions of particular ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... we had been introduced to bananas (figs, as they are miscalled in the West Indies); to the great green oranges, thick- skinned and fragrant; to those junks of sugar-cane, some two feet long, which Cuffy and Cuffy's ladies delight to gnaw, walking, sitting, and standing; increasing thereby the size of their lips, and breaking out, often enough, their upper front teeth. We had seen, and eaten too, the sweet sop {25a}—a passable fruit, or rather congeries of fruits, ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... of the strange stern man in her mind. Not that it affected the appetites of the pretty pair. We must not expect that of Cupid enthroned and in condition; under the influence of sea-air, too. The files of egg-cups laugh at such an idea. Still the worm did gnaw them. Judge, then, of their delight when, on this pleasant morning, as they were issuing from the garden of their cottage to go down to the sea, they caught sight of Tom Bakewell rushing up the road with a portmanteau on his shoulders, and, some ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... rats in the ceiling as they tried to gnaw the beams, and the moaning of the wind. Then the musical voice would ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... declared to Apollo, and Apollo told even to me. You are sailing to Italy, and you shall reach Italy and enter its harbors. But you are not destined to surround your city with a wall, till cruel hunger and vengeance for the wrong you have done us force you to gnaw your ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... star. Indeed, nutrition itself, hunting, feeding, and digestion, are forced activities, and the basis of passions not altogether congenial nor ideal. Hunger is an incipient faintness and agony, and an animal that needs to hunt, gnaw, and digest is no immortal, free, or essentially victorious creature. His will is already driven into by-paths and expedients; his primitive beatific vision has to be interrupted by remedial action to restore it for a while, since otherwise it would obviously degenerate rapidly through ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... cheerfulness to be like life itself—not to be created by any argument. Afterwards I learned, that the best way to manage some kinds of pain fill thoughts, is to dare them to do their worst; to let them lie and gnaw at your heart till they are tired; and you find you still have a residue of life they cannot kill. So, better and worse, I went on, till I came to a little clearing in the forest. In the middle of this clearing stood a long, ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald
... another family—she had so frequently become a mother in the past. But month succeeded month, and she for ever disappointed me, and at last I abandoned hope. In solitude and exile Mercedes degenerated sadly; got monstrously fat; too indolent to gnaw, let her teeth grow to a preposterous length; and in the end died of a surfeit ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland
... thee are not without war Thy living ones, and one doth gnaw the other Of those whom one wall and one fosse ...
— Dante's Purgatory • Dante
... are mated well, In harmony together dwell, Are faithful to each other, The streams of bliss flow constantly What bliss of angels is on high From hence may we discover; No storm, No worm Can destroy it, Can e'er gnaw it, What God giveth To the pair that ...
— Paul Gerhardt's Spiritual Songs - Translated by John Kelly • Paul Gerhardt
... very much of making a passage across the Atlantic. At one moment, when the ideas flow, you have the wind aft, and away you scud, with a flowing sheet, and a rapidity which delights you: at other times, when your spirit flags, and you gnaw your pen (I have lately used iron pens, for I'm a devil of a crib-biter), it is like unto a foul wind, tack and tack, requiring a long time to get on a short distance. But still you do go, although but slowly; and in both cases we must take the foul wind ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... burrow. She was so near that the Child could have touched her by reaching out his hand. But she took no more notice of him than if he had been a rotten stump. Less, in fact, for she might have tried to gnaw into him if he had been a rotten stump, in the ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... the edge of the divan, hugging the dressing-gown round him, scowled vindictively at nothing and began thoughtfully to gnaw a bony knuckle. ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... And he'd gnaw thro' a rope in the night-time, He'd eat thro' a wall or a door, He'd shwim thro' a lough in the winther, To be ...
— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various
... long ago since we were in it," nodded Jane. "Tommy was the last to be in it. Please pass the potatoes. This life at sea does sharpen one's appetite. It wouldn't do for me to go to sea really. I'd get so hungry between meals that I'd gnaw ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls Afloat • Janet Aldridge
... authoritatively. "They might as well be in use as packed away in that trunk in the garret for moths to gnaw." ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... a dog that gnaws his bone, I couch and gnaw it all alone— A time will come, which is not yet, When I'll bite him by whom ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... the comforting society of her mate; but Jan did not miss her a scrap. At present there was not an ounce of sentiment in his composition. He was kept warm, he lay snugly soft, and his stomach was generally full. He had great gristly bones to gnaw and play with, and Betty Murdoch, with a little solid-rubber ball, played with him also by the hour together. Beyond these things Jan had no thought or desire at present. He grew fast, and enjoyed every minute of ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... this was a long whistle of dismay. He said nothing, however, but once more applied the glasses to his eyes. Jack saw him gnaw his moustache, as he gazed out over the desert. The dust-cloud was quite close now—not more than a mile away. The boys, with their naked eyes, could easily catch the ...
— The Border Boys Across the Frontier • Fremont B. Deering
... which, by other observations I have made, I ghess to contain it, and become, as it were a womb to it, so long, till it be fit and prepar'd to be translated into another state, at what time, like (what they say of) Vipers, they gnaw their way through the womb that bred them; divers of these kinds I have met with upon Goosberry leaves, Rose-tree leaves, Willow leaves, and ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... nothing was left that could be by any possibility utilized by these early investigators. Here and there two or three dogs contested the spoils of a promising pile, to separate with watchful amity to gnaw individual bones. ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... he removed to America. Let us hope that there, at least, he is free to profess the truth he had found, and to be one of the instances—very rare indeed they are—of a consistent and steady Protestant, who had for years before been thoroughly imbued with those doctrines which gnaw at the very vitals of mental perception, and obliterate the sense of fairness, and which very seldom leave enough alive in the mind to ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... lives long enough will always find work to do," said the Hare. "I have sharp teeth to gnaw the boards, and paws to hammer them fast. I can set up at any time for a carpenter, for, Good tools make good work, ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... men. By his letters I was grieved to learn that starvation stared him in the face; the fishing, that promised so well when I passed, having entirely failed, and no deer were to be found. He wrote me, however, that he would maintain his post while a piece of parchment remained to gnaw! ...
— Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory - Volume II. (of 2) • John M'lean
... to eat since the evening before; and pangs of hunger began to gnaw him. He walked a short way toward a large, grey rock near which he heard a gurgling sound; and as he advanced he saw that a little stream of water gushed from beneath the base. He drank copiously of the pure, cold spring, and bathed ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins
... whetted their teeth against the stones, And now they pick the bishop's bones; They gnaw'd the flesh from every limb, For they were sent to ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various
... many suppose, entirely a product of our modern civilization. Centuries before we were born or thought of there was a widely press-agented boy in Sparta who even went so far as to let a fox gnaw his tender young stomach without permitting the discomfort inseparable from such a proceeding to interfere with either his facial expression or his flow of small talk. Historians have handed it down that, even in the later stages ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... it happened. Their notion of the cause of an eclipse is the most preposterous and ridiculous, that ever entered into the head, even of an heathen. They say, that the devil is come to devour the sun or moon, and falls to work to gnaw off the edge; that therefore it is necessary he should be driven away; consequently all the sorcerers or paters assemble, and amidst singular and hideous grimaces, throw up their spears towards the luminary attacked, all the villagers sounding their gonggongs with the greatest ...
— Letters on the Nicobar islands, their natural productions, and the manners, customs, and superstitions of the natives • John Gottfried Haensel
... mice will gnaw the backs of books to get at the glue, so, means should be taken to get rid of these vermin if they should appear. Mice especially will nibble vellum binding or the edges of vellum books that have become greasy ...
— Bookbinding, and the Care of Books - A handbook for Amateurs, Bookbinders & Librarians • Douglas Cockerell
... stood sponsors for that title. We were a pitiful lot of fellows in this garrison. We mixed the handful of flour given to us with snow water, and, wrapping the unsalted dough around a sagebrush spike, we cooked it in the flames, and ate it from the stick, as a dog would gnaw a bone. The officers put a guard around the few little hackberry trees to keep the men from eating the berries and the bark. Not a scrap of the few buffalo we found was wasted. Even the entrails cleansed in the snow and eaten raw gives hint of how ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... get their breakfast, consisting of half a dried fish or three biscuits apiece. The rest of the forenoon is spent in rooting round among all the refuse heaps they can find; and they gnaw and lick all the empty tin cases which they have ransacked hundreds of times before. If the cook sends a fresh tin dancing along the ice a battle immediately rages around the prize. It often happens ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... immersions usually restored him for a short time to reason, and he would crawl up the bank and gnaw a morsel of the maple sugar; but he could not eat much, for it was in a tough, compact cake, which his jaws had not power to break. All that day and the next night he lay on the banks of the salt stream, or rushed wildly ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... gives us a rubber ring, it has a bad taste; or an ivory one, it is too hard and hurts us. But we gnaw and gnaw, and fancy the new pain a little easier to bear than the old. Probably it is; probably the tooth gets through a little quicker for the days and nights of gnawing. But what a picture of patient misery is a baby with its rubber ring! Really one ...
— Bits About Home Matters • Helen Hunt Jackson
... off abruptly from the set in which he had been thrown. He had resolved to return to France,—he would try for a more respectable mode of existence. He had not found happiness in that liberty he had won, nor room for the ambition that began to gnaw him, in those pursuits from which his father had vainly warned him. His most reputable friend was his old tutor; he would go to him. He went; but the tutor was now married, and was himself a father,—and that made a wonderful ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... visitations, but they came to do the work of ruin more thoroughly. For not only the crops and fruits, but the foliage of the forest itself, nay, the small twigs and the bark of the trees are the victims of their curious and energetic rapacity. They have been known even to gnaw the door-posts of the houses. Nor do they execute their task in so slovenly a way, that, as they have succeeded other plagues so they may have successors themselves. They take pains to spoil what they leave. Like the Harpies, they smear every thing that they touch ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... began to gnaw my heart Before the day was done, For other men's lives had all gone out, Like candles in the sun!— But it seem'd as if I had broke, at last, A ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... for Frolic and one for the baby; and there they both sat, with wreaths on their heads, and behaved with the utmost propriety, although Frolic was seen, after dinner, to slip down under the table, and gnaw a bone, as Floribel would not have done, and the baby cried for a cherry, ...
— The Magician's Show Box and Other Stories • Lydia Maria Child
... the bitterness now existing. I believe it is to the interest of Great Britain to settle the Anglo-Irish dispute. It has been countered in many of its policies in America and the Colonies by the vengeful feelings of Irish exiles. There may yet come a time when the refusal of the Irish mouse to gnaw at a net spread about the lion may bring about the downfall of the Empire. It cannot be to the interest of Great Britain to have on its flank some millions of people who, whenever Great Britain is engaged in a war which ...
— Imaginations and Reveries • (A.E.) George William Russell
... insist upon bringing in some sort of bone!" but I begged her to let him gnaw them inside because it was so cold. Having been granted this privilege, he settled himself at my back and I became absorbed in some specially nice ...
— Indian Boyhood • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... recovered his good humour. "Since your heart beats for vermin, feel for the carrion crows! they be as good vermin as these; would ye send them to bed supperless, poor pretty poppets? Why, these be their larder; the pangs of hunger would gnaw them dead, but for cold cut-purse hung up ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... it oft, but now I feel a wonder, In what grievous pain they die, that die for hunger. O my greedy stomach, how it doth bite and gnaw? If I were at a rack, I could eat hay or straw. Mine empty guts do fret, my maw doth even tear, Would God I had a piece of some horsebread here. Yet is master Esau in worse case than I. If he have not some meat, the sooner he ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Robert Dodsley
... and horns laid flat by its sides, and miniature wings on its back. Observe that the sides of the tail, and one pair of legs, are fringed with dark hairs. After a fortnight's rest in this prison this 'nymph' will gnaw her way out and swim through the water on her back, by means of that fringed tail and paddles, till she reaches the bank and the upper air. There, under the genial light of day, her skin will burst, and a four-winged fly emerge, to buzz over the water ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... desperate. We have been worse off than we are now. I agree with you that our course is clear; what we have got to do, as I understand it, is to outlive a crippled scoundrel. Well, love and a clear conscience will surely enable us to outlive a villain, whose spine is injured, and whose conscience must gnaw him, and who has no creature's ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... for sugar. It occurred in camp one rainy day during the siege of Corinth. Jake Hill, of my company, had covered the top of a big army hardtack with sugar in a cone-like form, piling it on as long as the tack would hold a grain. Then he seated himself on his knapsack and proceeded to gnaw away at his feast, by a system of "regular approaches." He was even then suffering from the epidemic before mentioned, and so weak he could hardly walk. Some one said to him, "Jake, that sugar ain't good for you in your condition." ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... horses, crying of elephants, hissing of serpents, and wailing of turtles, that he was much more troubled than if he had been in the middle of the crowd at the fair of Fontenay or Niort. Just so is it with those who are tormented with the grievous pangs of hunger. The stomach begins to gnaw, and bark, as it were, the eyes to look dim, and the veins, by greedily sucking some refection to themselves from the proper substance of all the members of a fleshy consistence, violently pull down and ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... feet, Corrie at once hopped towards Alice, after the fashion of those country wights who indulge in sack races, and, going down on his knees beside her, began diligently to gnaw the rope that bound her with his teeth. This was by no means an easy or a quick process. He gnawed and bit at it long before the tough rope gave way. At length Alice was freed, and she immediately set to work to undo the fastenings ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... her gallants in mimic court at the Hotel de Ville, De Retz was wearing his sword-belt over his archbishop's gown, the little hunchback Conti was generalissimo, and the starving people were pillaging Mazarin's library, in joke, "to find something to gnaw upon." Outside the walls, the maids-of-honor were quarrelling over the straw beds which annihilated all the romance of martyrdom, and Conde, with five thousand men, was besieging five hundred thousand. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... along the lanes and brushing under the trees; the unfinished stacks with forkfuls of hay being handed up its sides to the builder, and when finished the shape of a great pear, with a pole in the top for the stem. Maybe in the fall and winter the calves and yearlings will hover around it and gnaw its base until it overhangs them and shelters them from the storm. Or the farmer will "fodder" his cows there,—one of the most picturesque scenes to be witnessed on the farm,—twenty or thirty or forty milchers filing along toward the stack in the field, or clustered about it, waiting ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... is one of thy inventions for making me hunt every Englishman to death, that thou mayest gnaw their bones." ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... at the railway station. You've pluck enough of that kind. You must now show that you've that other kind of pluck. You know the story of the boy who would not cry though the wolf was gnawing him underneath his frock. Most of us have some wolf to gnaw us somewhere; but we are generally gnawed beneath our clothes, so that the world doesn't see; and it behoves us so to bear it that the world shall not suspect. The man who goes about declaring himself to be miserable will be not only ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... perished first; that I should have lived, if I had not perished, like a mere savage; that if I had killed a goat or a fowl, by any contrivance, I had no way to flay or open it, or part the flesh from the skin and the bowels, or to cut it up; but must gnaw it with my teeth, and pull it with my claws, ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... sensations those irregular desires, those disgusting propensities, by which he is perpetually agitated; seeing the terrible effect of those licentious passions which torment him; of those lasting inquietudes which gnaw his repose; of those stupendous evils, as well physical as moral, which assail him on every side: the contemplator of humanity would be tempted to believe that happiness was not made for this world; that any effort to cure those minds which every thing ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... further, and she met a rat. So she said: "Rat! rat! gnaw rope; rope won't hang butcher; butcher won't kill ox; ox won't drink water; water won't quench fire; fire won't burn stick; stick won't beat dog; dog won't bite pig; piggy won't get over the stile; and I shan't get home ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... "If you call a leaky old ferryboat with the weather so damp that you can't touch the rail without feeling as if you have had a dip in the briny—if that's what you call romantic, then give me a good open fire and plenty of chicken bones to gnaw." ...
— The Outdoor Girls on Pine Island - Or, A Cave and What It Contained • Laura Lee Hope
... government agent's residence, a hook having been laid the night before, baited with the entrails of a goat; and made fast, in the native fashion, by a bunch of fine cords, which the creature cannot gnaw asunder as it would a solid rope, since they sink into the spaces between its teeth. The one taken was small, being only about ten or eleven feet in length, whereas they are frequently killed from fifteen to nineteen feet ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... somewhere in the wood. So did the fox, and oh! it looked so frightened. It lay down panting, its tongue hanging out and its ears pressed back against its head, and whisked its big tail from side to side. Then it began to gnaw again, but this time at its own leg. It wanted to bite it off and so get away. I thought this very brave of the fox, and though I hated it because it had eaten my brother and tried to eat me, I felt ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard
... Safikuli Khan, is advancing with a large army against the son of Kueprili, and the darkness of defeat threatens to obscure the sun-like radiance of the Ottoman arms. Most puissant Padishah! suffer not the tooth of disaster to gnaw away at thy glory! The Grand Vizier and I have already gathered together thy host on the shores of the Bosphorus. They are ready, at a moment's notice, to embark in the ships prepared for them. Money and provisions in abundance have been sent to the frontier for the gallant ...
— Halil the Pedlar - A Tale of Old Stambul • Mr Jkai
... to Sheikh Hamed; as he was not a rich man, he laboured hard to make the most of every shukka and doti expended, and each fresh expenditure seemed to gnaw his very vitals: he was ready to weep, as he himself expressed it, at the high prices of Ugogo, and the extortionate demands of its sultans. For this reason, being the leader of the caravans, so far as he was able we were very ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... suppressed excitement. "As I told you, I am up against a blank wall. I can't see my way." He gave a nervous little laugh and went on: "God! I'm ashamed of myself—ashamed! Did you ever read the fable of the Lion and the Mouse? Well, I want you to gnaw with your sharp woman's teeth at the cords which bind the son of John Burkett Ryder to this Rossmore woman. I want you to be the mouse—to set me free of this ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein
... quivered with an almost passionate disdain. She was suddenly aware of an intense burning misery that seemed to gnaw into her very soul. Why had she come out with this buffoon, she wondered? Why had she come to the masquerade at all? She was utterly out of sympathy with its festive gaiety. A great and overmastering desire for solitude descended upon her. ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... frumpish fool, That loves to be oppression's tool, May envy gnaw his rotten soul, And discontent devour him; May dool and sorrow be his chance, Dool and sorrow, dool and sorrow, Dool and sorrow be his chance, And nane say, Wae 's me for him! May dool and sorrow be his chance, Wi' a' the ills that come frae France, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... sonny, why not come home and have a bit of supper with us? That is, if there is any. But come round, and gnaw the old hambone—what? I think we got some claret and I know George's got a drop of Three-Star. Young Beryl's off to-morrow on the Northern tour with the White Bird Company, so of course we're in a devil of muddle. George's sister's round there, packing ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... Bumper began to gnaw at the lining of the muff, and pretty soon got his whole body under it, and then he began to kick and wriggle to get out. He felt he was being smothered alive, and he squealed aloud. The lady finally rescued him, but not until she had torn away half ...
— Bumper, The White Rabbit • George Ethelbert Walsh
... inside of that mule. He was hungry and vicious. He had lived in the white "settlements," and knew something. He was fastened by a long hide lariat to a peg driven into the ground, as were all the others, and he knew that the best place to gnaw in two that lariat was close to the peg, where he could get a good pull upon it. As soon as he had freed himself he tried the lariat of another mule, and found that the peg had been driven into loose earth and came right up. That was a scientific discovery, ...
— Two Arrows - A Story of Red and White • William O. Stoddard
... ladangs, thinking that it means a chase of the wild pig. Equally eager are they to get into the room at night, or at any time when the owner has left them outside. Doors are cleverly opened by them, but when securely locked the dogs sometimes, in their impatience, gnaw holes in the lower part of the door which look like the work of rodents, though none that I saw was large enough to admit a canine of their size. One day a big live pig was brought in from the utan over the shoulder of a strong man, its legs tied together, ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... to a pinch, don't he always get there with the goods? My feet can ache all they want to; but, all the same, they'll do what I say. If it's a mile or six of the same, I'm good for it. But I wish I had something to gnaw on meanwhile, because I'm as hungry as a starved wolf, ...
— Boy Scouts on Hudson Bay - The Disappearing Fleet • G. Harvey Ralphson
... to reach up on his hind legs and gnaw the standing plant. The management of a dry and slippery corn-ear at first presented some difficulty, but, as his muscles strengthened, he found himself able to sit up on his haunches and hold it squirrel-fashion ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... were but clear within, Which now is racked with my former sin; With horror I behold my secret stealing, My bribes, oppression, and my graceless dealing; My office-sins, which I had clean forgotten, Will gnaw my soul when all my bones are rotten: I must confess it, very grief doth force me, Dead or alive, both God and man doth curse me. LET ALL EXCISEMEN hereby warning take, To shun their practice for ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell
... that we might want drink. At that hour the camp was a melancholy sight: the Europeans surly because they had discussed a bottle of cognac when they should have slept; the good Sayyid without his coffee, and perhaps without his prayers; Wakl Mohammed sorrowfully attempting to gnaw tooth-breaking biscuit; and the Bedawin working and walking like somnambules. However, at 5.10 a.m. we struck north, over a low divide of trap hill, by a broad and evidently made road, and regained the Wady el-Kubbah: here it is a pleasant ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 2 • Richard Burton
... Republicans: Socialist papers and Socialist leaders groveling before Royalties when they visited Paris: the souls of servants gaping at titles, and gold lace, and orders: they could be kept quiet by just having a bone to gnaw, or the Legion of Honor flung at them. If the Kings had ennobled all the citizens of France, all the citizens of France ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... with the dirty faces and meddling fingers, who poke their hands into our haversacks, to the farm servants who inspect all our belongings when we are out on parade, and even now we have become accustomed to the very rats that scurry through the barn at midnight and gnaw at our equipment and devour our rations when they get hold of them. One night a rat bit a man's nose—but the tale is a long one and I will tell it ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill
... since man was curst, I mean of body, not the mental, To name the worst, among the worst, The dental sure is transcendental; Some bit of masticating bone, That ought to help to clear a shelf, But lets its proper work alone, And only seems to gnaw itself; In fact, of any grave attack On victual there is little danger, 'Tis so like coming to the rack, As well as going ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... third morning broke, the boys were starving with hunger, and could have eaten anything. They even tried to gnaw at bits of leather cut out of their boots, but they were so tough and sodden from their long immersion in the sea that they could make ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... we have quoted Mentzelius, it may not be amiss to give D'Alembert's theory of book-worms: "I believe," he says, "that a little beetle lays her eggs in books in August, thence is hatched a mite, like the cheese-mite, which devours books merely because it is compelled to gnaw its way out into the air." Book-worms like the paste which binders employ, but D'Alembert adds that they cannot endure absinthe. Mr. Blades finds too that they disdain to devour ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang
... he will eat out his heart, while his friends gnaw their thick fists for that they are deprived of the battle? ...
— Cyrano de Bergerac • Edmond Rostand
... who, though your chests Vast sums of money should to you afford, Would ne'ertheless add more unto that hoard, And yet not be content,—you clunchfist dastards, Insatiable fiends, and Pluto's bastards, Greedy devourers, chichy sneakbill rogues, Hell-mastiffs gnaw your bones, you ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... co-operator, nature, would always take up the work where he left it, and begin at once to beautify it with her rich and luxuriant verdure. For example, as soon as the fires went out over the clearing, she began, with her sun and rain, to blanch the blackened stumps, and to gnaw at their foundations with her tooth of decay. If Albert made a road or a path she rounded its angles, softened away all the roughness that his plow or hoe had left in it, and fringed it with grass and flowers. The solitary and slender trees which had ...
— Mary Erskine • Jacob Abbott
... I went to London," he writes in the Memoirs, "to make the acquaintance of the language and the people. The devil take the people and their language! They take a dozen words of one syllable into their mouth, chew them, gnaw them, spit them out again, and they call that talking. Fortunately they are by nature rather silent, and although they look at us with gaping mouths, yet ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... to gnaw at him. At long intervals he would pause while a train roared by, or because he fancied he had heard a sound. Then he would pound and call until he was hoarse, and then go on ...
— Samuel the Seeker • Upton Sinclair
... for scant rations. Hunger was the prevailing epidemic. At one end of our barracks was the kitchen, and by the door stood a barrel into which was thrown beef bones and slops. I saw a starving boy fish out one of these bones and begin to gnaw it. A guard discovered him. He snatched the bone from the prisoner's hand, cocked his pistol, pressed it to his head and ordered him to his all-fours and made him bark for the bone he held ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... been much to take hold of in Ada's words, but Ada's manner had made them unmistakable; and from that moment a little worm had begun to gnaw ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... it. Stray lamb! I should say as much! A little white corset-lamb, used to eat out o' your hand, with a blue ribbon round its neck. Goin' to be sent out to her death—or worse, by a sharp-fangled wolf of a boardin'-house keeper, who'd gnaw the skin off'n your bones, an' then crack the bones to get at the marrer, if you give her the chanct. I'll tell you all about it ...
— Martha By-the-Day • Julie M. Lippmann
... the top of a broad, flat rock. And sitting down right in the center of it, he began to gnaw at the chestnut. He was so busy and so interested in what he was doing that before he knew it the rock began to move. It moved so slowly that it was not until it started to climb a little hummock, and nearly tipped Frisky over on ...
— The Tale of Frisky Squirrel • Arthur Scott Bailey
... who is it? Is it I? No, I mind my business as you mind yours. Of course, I take nuts and beech-mast and acorns, when they fall; and I admit that I am a regular whale for fir-cones. That fresh fir-seed is about the nicest thing I know. So I gnaw the cones in two and eat the seeds; and then they are gone when the forester wants them to sow firs with. But that is only reasonable. I must live as well as he and there are quite enough firs in the world. And I won't deny I may eat a bit of root once ...
— The Old Willow Tree and Other Stories • Carl Ewald
... but the soup he forgot; Not a meal did his lordship allow, Unless we gnaw'd o'er the blade-bone of the boar, Or the rib of the famous ...
— Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare • Walter Savage Landor
... checked their vociferation and injured their lungs; so it was discontinued; and they returned again to the halberts, where their hands were tied up over their heads. Some of these poor wretches have been known to gnaw the flesh of their own arms, in the agonies of torture; and many of them have died with ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... to the Turtle: "Friend, you have teeth; you gnaw through the leather trap. I will go and see to it that the hunter keeps away. If we both do our best our friend will ...
— More Jataka Tales • Re-told by Ellen C. Babbitt
... me. The Yankees ganged around him, an' made him leave me alone, give me my bucket o' molasses, an' I carried it on to the house. They went down to the lot, turned out all the horses an' tuck two o' the big mules, Kentucky mules, an' carried 'em off. One of the mules would gnaw every line in two you tied him with, an' the other could not be rode. So next morning after the Yankees carried 'em off they both come back home with pieces o' lines on 'em. The mules was named, one was named Bill, an' the other Charles. You could ride old Charles, but you couldn't ride old ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States • Various
... door his wife came forth to meet him. "Much gladness!" she cried aloud before she saw his burden; "tempered only by a regret that you did not abandon your chase at an earlier hour. Fear not for the present that the wolf-tusk of famine shall gnaw our repose or that the dreaded wings of the white and scaly one shall hover about our house-top. Your wealthy cousin, journeying back to the Capital from the land of the spice forests, has been here in your absence, leaving you gifts of fur, silk, carved ivory, oil, ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... suggestion of evil by a stronger mind, Guy Waring began to walk on in a feverish fashion, fast, fast, oh, so fast, not knowing where he went, but conscious only that he must keep moving, lest an accusing conscience should gnaw his ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... as old as I am, young man, you'll experience it too. There are few perfectly sound trees in the forest, few horses without a blemish, few swords without a stain, and scarcely a man who has passed his fortieth year that has not a worm in his breast. Some gnaw slightly, others torture with sharp fangs, and mine—mine.—Do you want to cast a ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... he began, then, feebly surrendering to the gnaw of desire, he reached hastily for the glass, as if in fear that ...
— A Son Of The Sun • Jack London
... is the arrangement in another species of Orchids. When the bee begins to gnaw the labellum, he unavoidably touches a tapering projection, which, when touched, transmits a vibration which ruptures a membrane, which sets free a spring by which a mass of pollen is shot, with unerring aim, over the ...
— What is Darwinism? • Charles Hodge
... turned suddenly very pale, and began to tremble and gnaw her nether lip with her teeth in ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... without harm to himself. One of those animals has been known to reach forward and spring the implement, jerking back his paw quickly enough to escape the sharp teeth. A fox, too, when caught in a steel trap will sometimes gnaw off the leg just above where it is imprisoned, and afterward go through life with little inconvenience on three legs. You may be sure that he is never ...
— The Hunters of the Ozark • Edward S. Ellis
... whanne he hadde a space fro his care, 505 Thus to him-self ful ofte he gan to pleyne; He sayde, 'O fool, now art thou in the snare, That whilom Iapedest at loves peyne; Now artow hent, now gnaw thyn owene cheyne; Thou were ay wont eche lovere reprehende 510 Of thing fro which thou canst thee ...
— Troilus and Criseyde • Geoffrey Chaucer
... a trap, will very often gnaw off a limb. This requires a special power and a moral energy that ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon
... rat the way must clear. I need not conjure long it seems, One rustles hitherward, and soon my voice will hear. The master of the rats and mice, Of flies and frogs, of bugs and lice, Commands thy presence; without fear Come forth and gnaw the threshold here, Where he with oil has smear'd it.—Thou Com'st hopping forth already! Now To work! The point that holds me bound Is in the outer angle found. Another bite—so—now 'tis done— Now, Faustus, till we meet again, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... sea, within a week the wolf stare of hunger would make him and his associates seriously consider casting lots as to who should be eaten. Later the feast might actually begin and ... human nature find it easy enough to gnaw the shin bone of a fellow castaway. This thing we call human nature is a bundle of emotions and desires that will find expression in different ways, according to the environment in which it is located, as we have seen ...
— Socialism and American ideals • William Starr Myers
... Caspar now knew what Ossaroo purposed—to snare the dogs of course. Yet how the snares were to be set, or how a wild dog could be captured with a piece of catgut, was more than they could comprehend. Surely, thought they, the dogs will gnaw such a string to pieces in half a minute, and set themselves free again? So it would have appeared, and so they would doubtless have done had the snares been set for them in the ordinary manner. But Ossaroo ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid
... permission, assent. bild (-en, -er), picture, scene. billig, reasonable, cheap. biltog, outlawed. binda, (band, pl. bundo, bundit, bunden), to bind, restrain. bister, grim, harsh. bita (bet, bitit, biten), to bite, cut, gnaw. bitter, bitter. bjuda (bjd, bjudit, bjuden), to invite, offer, bid. bjudning (-en, -ar), invitation. bjlk|e (-en, -ar), joist, beam. bjd, see bjuda. bjrk (-en, -ar), birchtree. bjrkskog (-en, -ar), birch woods. bjrn (-en, -ar), bear. bjrnhud (-en, -ar), bearskin. ...
— Fritiofs Saga • Esaias Tegner
... remaining in concealment during the day, and becoming active at dusk. The eggs are deposited late in June and during July, one in a place, on the bark of the tree, near its base. Within two weeks the young worms are hatched, and at once commence with their sharp mandibles to gnaw their way through the outer bark to the interior. It is generally conceded that the larvae are three years in reaching maturity. The young ones lie for the first year in the sapwood and the inner bark, excavating flat, shallow cavities, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 443, June 28, 1884 • Various
... the offspring of a fly called Selandria cerasi, reduce the leaves to skeletons, and thus destroy them; the cherry-weevils penetrate their bark, cover their branches with warts and cause them to decay; and borers gnaw galleries in their trunks and devour the inner bark and sap-wood.' So you see that, with such an army of destroyers, we may be thankful to get any fruit ...
— Among the Trees at Elmridge • Ella Rodman Church
... up the trail," he said. "Didn't see a thing but an ol' gnaw bucket. We'll jest eat a bite an' p'int off to the nor'west an' keep watch o' this 'ere trail. They's Injuns over thar on the slants. We got to know how they look an' 'bout how many ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... serv'd ye! Forget me and the peace I have wrought your Cuntry; Bury my memory, raze out my name, My forty yeares endeavoures write in dust That your great Prince may blow 'em into nothing; And on my Monument (you most forgetfull) Fling all your scornes, erect an yroon-toothed envy That she may gnaw the pious ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... suggest, haov, rij, [w]heg and who, come, on, you know what I mean, as well as [h]orses. War rod: scepter, sceptic, syllables, bless, access, axes, oxen, Christ-cross, beaux, beauty, ancre, kernel, acres, craz'd, threatned, knead, bootes, Bootes, winged, gnaw'd: th is cut of from with, cum, after another of the same, at ...
— Magazine, or Animadversions on the English Spelling (1703) • G. W.
... or a gallows, which the terrific minister lost no opportunity to place before his imagination; and occasionally despatched a Paris Gazette, which distilled the venom of Richelieu's heart, and which, like the eagle of Prometheus, could gnaw at the heart of the insulated politician chained to ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... a thing we don't know about each other," she had said. "We each know the other's weaknesses and strength. I hate the way you gnaw your mustache when you're troubled, and I think the fuss you make when the waiter pours your coffee without first having given you sugar and cream is the most absurd thing I've ever seen. But, then, I know how it annoys you to see me sitting with one slipper dangling from my toe, when ...
— Emma McChesney & Co. • Edna Ferber
... plain, And laughter-loving childhood roams Unmoved by care or pain; Let famine gaunt and grim despair Behind you stalk along, And pestilence taint all the air With victims from the strong Let dogs from mangled beauty's cheeks The flesh and sinews tear, And craunch the bones around for weeks, And gnaw the skulls till bare Let vultures gather round the heaps Made up of man and beast, And, while the widowed mother weeps, Indulge their horrid feast, Till, startled by wild piteous groans, On dreary wings they ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies
... Rage began to gnaw in Fionn's soul, and a red haze danced and flickered before his eyes. His hands began to twitch and a desire crept over him to seize on champions by the neck, and to shake and worry and rage among them like a wild ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • James Stephens
... for it that I shall make a fine meal of you before I think of parting with you." "Silly wretch!" said the File, as gruff as could be, "you had much better be quiet, and let me alone; for, if you gnaw for ever, you will get nothing but your trouble for your pains. Make a meal of me, indeed! why, I myself can bite the hardest iron in the shop; and if you go on with your foolish nibbling I shall ...
— Favourite Fables in Prose and Verse • Various
... one of the three great causes of fear in Aristotle, commonly caused by prodigies and dismal accidents, which much trouble many of us, (Nescio quid animus mihi praesagit mali.) As if a hare cross the way at our going forth, or a mouse gnaw our clothes: if they bleed three drops at nose, the salt falls towards them, a black spot appear in their nails, &c., with many such, which Delrio Tom. 2. l. 3. sect. 4. Austin Niphus in his book de Auguriis. Polydore ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... than once have I satisfied my hunger with it during these disastrous days when the briars have turned into rose-colored crystals, and when the agile wagtail utters its shrill cry toward the larvae which its beak can no longer reach beneath the ice along the banks. I shall continue to gnaw these barks. For, Oh Francis, I do not wish to die with these gentle friends who are in their agony, but rather I wish to live beside you and obtain my sustenance from the bitter fiber of ...
— Romance of the Rabbit • Francis Jammes
... four-and-twenty hours, let me grasp that hated, damned viper, that would gnaw the heart's core of Bertha. Give me the key of your misery; O! bless me—bless your Bertha; give me those accursed manuscripts, daggers bequeathed you by a false friend, that I may at once, in your presence, give them ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... Peetie Bow Wow, the puppy dogs. And as for Uncle Wiggily Longears, the old rabbit gentleman, who was quite rich since he found his fortune, he was so busy that he wore out two rheumatism crutches and Nurse Jane Fuzzy-Wuzzy had to gnaw him another from a broom stick, instead of ...
— Curly and Floppy Twistytail - The Funny Piggie Boys • Howard R. Garis
... I gave him brown bread and corn cake, and once in a while I let him have a beef bone to play with. He liked that very much, and he did not object to being tied up sometimes, if he had a bone to gnaw." ...
— Friends and Helpers • Sarah J. Eddy
... 'Mouse! mouse! gnaw rope; Rope won't bind ox; Ox won't drink water; Water won't quench fire; Fire won't burn stick; Stick won't beat snake; Snake won't bite Queen; Queen won't coax King; King won't kill man; Man won't cut tree; I can't get the grain of corn To save my ...
— Tales Of The Punjab • Flora Annie Steel
... are there who never once knew what it was to want bread, and to find it nowhere, though the lands all teemed with harvest! They never feel hungry, or cold, or hot, or tired, or thirsty: they never feel their bones ache, and their throat parch, and their entrails gnaw! These people ought not to get to heaven—they have it ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... them of their grief; Special good surgeons to cure dangerous wounds: For, stricken with a stake into the flesh, This policy they use to get it out: They trail one of their feet upon the ground, And gnaw the flesh about where the wound is Till it be clean drawn out: and then, because Ulcers and sores kept foul are hardly cur'd, They lick and purify it with their tongue, And well observe Hippocrates' old rule, ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... Morgan, a man distinguished for strength, courage, and ferocity, say to the companion with whom he was sitting by the watch-fire, "Gwenwyn is turned to a priest, or a woman! When was it before these last months, that a follower of his was obliged to gnaw the meat from the bone so closely, as I am now peeling the morsel which I hold in my hand?" [Footnote: It is said in Highland tradition, that one of the Macdonalds of the Isles, who had suffered his broadsword to remain sheathed ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... accusation that admits of defence, the arrow that flies at noonday, that is most to be feared. It is the cold, inscrutable glance, the chilled and altered manner, the suspicion that walketh in darkness,—it is these that try the strength of woman's love, and gnaw with slow but certain tooth the cable-chain that holds the anchor of her fidelity. These are the evil spirits which prayer and fasting alone can cast out. They may fly before the uplifted eye and bended knee, but never before the flash of anger or ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... Bianchon. "Upon my word, that ghastly old maid looks just like one of the long worms that will gnaw a beam ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... the music, slapping the back of his flat right hand, up and under his left hand for a tail, holding up a stick in both paws to gnaw it, and lumbering along in time to the music, at the same time imitating the ...
— Woodland Tales • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... he dreaded above all things. He was very well pleased when he had to transmit to the Legislative Body or to the Tribunate any proposed law of trifling importance, and he used then to say that he had thrown them a bone to gnaw. ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
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