"Eggshell" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... legs feebly, but alas! its enemy had found and struck it down, and with its hard, sharp little beak had drilled a hole in one of the upper plates of its abdomen, and from that small opening had cunningly extracted all the meat. Though still alive it was empty as a blown eggshell. Poor queen and mother, you survived the winter in vain, and went abroad in vain in the bitter weather in quest of bread to nourish your few first-born—the grubs that would help you by and by; now there will be no bread for them, and for you no populous city in the flowery earth and ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... Hakodate two years gone, when he had a row an' shot four iv his men? Wasn't I a-layin' on the Emma L., not three hundred yards away? An' there was a man the same year he killed with a blow iv his fist. Yes, sir, killed 'im dead-oh. His head must iv smashed like an eggshell. An' wasn't there the Governor of Kura Island, an' the Chief iv Police, Japanese gentlemen, sir, an' didn't they come aboard the Ghost as his guests, a-bringin' their wives along—wee an' pretty little bits of things like you see 'em painted ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... the culprit. In carrying out an eggshell, broken at one end and of no further use, she dropped it near the foot of the tree. To her this was doubtless a disaster, but to me it was a treasure-trove, for it told her well-kept secret. The hint was taken, the home soon found in the heart of an oak, with ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... of our people went to this sandbank while the rest stayed to watch the cayman. The turtle had advanced on to the sand to lay their eggs, and the men got betwixt them and the water; they brought off half a dozen very fine and well-fed turtle. The eggshell of the fresh-water turtle is not hard like that of the land-tortoise, but appears like white parchment, and gives way to the pressure of the fingers; but it is very tough, and does not break. On this sandbank, close to the forest, we found several guana's nests; ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... of whom he spoke had committed. "They were all mangled and crushed in a moment, in the midst of their game of monte, as they were fighting and quarrelling over the stakes. The villain Gomez had his skull cracked like an eggshell by the foremast coming down on top of him, as it went by the board with all its yards and gear. The maintopmast, then fell also leaving La Bella Catarina the wreck you saw, Senor Lieutenant, and you, young gentleman, ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... infuriated beast. Even as the astonished Abou dropped his struggling burden to meet the attack of the unexpected deliverer, he was felled to the earth by a mighty blow from the rifle which his assailant swung swift and true. His skull was crushed as if it were an eggshell. ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... doctor in a low voice, "metaphors literally fail me. It is inadequate to say that the skull was smashed to bits like an eggshell. Fragments of bone were driven into the body and the ground like bullets into a mud wall. It was the ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... a-shooting under his own eye. By these means he became well acquainted and popular amongst the poor in the neighbourhood early, for there was not a cabin at which he had not stopped some morning or other, along with the huntsman, to drink a glass of burnt whisky out of an eggshell, to do him good and warm his heart and drive the cold out of his stomach. The old people always told him he was a great likeness of Sir Patrick, which made him first have an ambition to take after him, as far as his fortune ...
— Castle Rackrent • Maria Edgeworth
... much stronger than myself, and if I am upon an equal footing with you, could crush me as easily as an eggshell.' ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... see the wonderful sight. She dived bows foremost, and there was a terrific explosion, which sent one of the funnels into the air. I suppose we should have cheered—somehow, none of us felt like cheering. We were all keen sailors, and it went to our hearts to see such a ship go down like a broken eggshell. I gave a gruff order, and all were at their posts again while we headed north-west. Once round the Land's End I called up my two consorts, and we met next day at Hartland Point, the south end of Bideford Bay. For ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Ruby Ring set with Diamonds in a gold snuff-box. For the Second prize there was a little Cupid, very nicely done out of amethysts, and besides these a set of fine Porcelain, of the kind they call Eggshell (for its exceeding Tenderness and Brittleness), with some Japan trunks, feather-fans, and Whimwams of that order. All the men of quality in Vienna were spectators; but only the ladies had permission to shoot. There was ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... enough, the moment her bows passed beyond the pier, the sea struck her, and tossed her like an eggshell, and the deck, from stem to stern, was drenched in a moment, and running with floods as if she had been under water. For a few moments H. and I both enjoyed the motion. We stood amidships, she in her shawl, I in a great tarpauling which I had borrowed of Jack, and every pitch ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... saw a swarthy-faced and athletic savage squeeze through the narrow crevice. He had not straightened up before the axe, wielded by the giant hunter, descended on his head, cracking his skull as if it were an eggshell. The savage sank to the earth without even a moan. Another savage naked and powerful, slipped in. He had to stoop to get through. He raised himself, and seeing Wetzel, he tried to dodge the lightning sweep of the axe. It missed his head, at which it had been aimed, but struck just over ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... them. Bulletin after bulletin came to port with its doleful tale of this vessel burned or that vessel scuttled, this one held by the pirates for their own use or that one stripped of its goods and sent into port as empty as an eggshell from which the yolk had been sucked. Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Charleston suffered alike, and worthy ship owners had to leave off counting their losses upon their fingers and take to the slate to ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... was a place of unbearable sound. The crash of gunfire, it seemed, must crush the glass wall like an eggshell by the sheer impact of its own thunder. In that pandemonium Smithy never knew when they flattened out. He knew only that the hill ahead twinkled brilliantly, and that each flashing light was an exploding shell. He knew when the hill ...
— Two Thousand Miles Below • Charles Willard Diffin
... of their own in its place. The man and his wife did not at first notice any change, but the wife gradually became suspicious, and she asked the advice of a wise woman, who told her to brew in a nutshell, with an eggshell as beer barrel, in the changeling's presence, who exclaimed that it had lived so many years as to have seen Rold Wood hewn down and grow up three times, but had never seen any one brew in a nutshell before. ...
— A Danish Parsonage • John Fulford Vicary
... carry off honours in this contest; and so, when the great fellow came within reaching distance, they tried, with a couple of spears, to kill him; but a clever, rapid twist of his horns seemed to parry their spear thrusts, and before they knew how it happened the side of the canoe was crushed in as an eggshell, and they were ...
— Three Boys in the Wild North Land • Egerton Ryerson Young
... admitted that it was worth while coming, and let me record in advance that when we got to Vienna, and they served us an equally delicious beer in long thin glasses as delicate as an eggshell, Bee grew so enthusiastic in the process of beer drinking that Jimmie grew absurdly proud of his pupil, and professed to think that she was "coming round after all." But Bee declared that it was the thinness of the glasses ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell
... with a large clientele (Burmese themselves are too indolent to make successful shopkeepers—they much prefer to look on, and laugh, and bargain). In this and other emporiums of the same class were to be found rare embroideries, ivory carvings, eggshell china, Oriental draperies, jade, and piles of Chinese and Japanese silks of the most exquisite fabric and colour. Sophy liked to wander round, to marvel and admire, but soon discovered that to do the latter was to be immediately endowed with her fancy—be it an enormous ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... at once to a corner cupboard in the parlour, inlaid with tulips in Dutch marqueterie, and containing the Major's priceless eggshell china. To be sure, if the French landed, she—weak woman that she was—could not defend this treasure. But might not the Major blame her ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the eggshell after the meat is out we are taught in our childhood, and practise it all our lives; which, nevertheless, is but a superstitious relict, according to the judgment of Pliny, and the intent hereof was to prevent witch-craft ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... its air; for he will be drunken with it, maddened, morally slain. The man who guides his life by inner law, can no more live servile to outward authority than can the full-grown bird live imprisoned in the eggshell. But the man who has not yet attained to governing himself can no more live under the law of liberty than can the unfledged bird live without its protective covering. These things are terribly simple, and the series of demonstrations old and new that proves ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner
... intimate, discreet. He felt hideously out of place. He was an intruder; he, with his enormous feet, his colossal bones, his crude, brutal gestures. The mere weight of his limbs, he was sure, would crush the little bed-stead like an eggshell. ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... never once left the track, and went flying on down the grade towards the next station, eight miles distant, the coach bouncing over the loose stones and small obstacles, and surging from side to side, as an eggshell would in the rapids of Niagara. Not satisfied with the break-neck rate at which they were traveling, Bob pulled out his revolver and fired in rapid succession, at the same time yelling in ...
— The Life of Hon. William F. Cody - Known as Buffalo Bill The Famous Hunter, Scout and Guide • William F. Cody
... and, calling to Dick, Harry leaped down into the boat. The two midshipmen trained the gun upon the nearest prahu, and aiming at the waterline, fired it when the craft was within twenty feet of them. A moment later its impetus brought it against the side of the launch, which was crushed like an eggshell between it and the captured prahu, the two midshipmen springing on board just in time. It was the Malays' turn to board now, that of the British to prevent them; the musketry of the sailors and marines for a time kept the enemy off, but they strove desperately to gain a ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty
... He will come to in a short while." The Phoenix lifted the Scientist's sun helmet and examined the back of his head. "A large lump is developing, my boy. A most pleasant sight! I fear the sun helmet is now useless—crushed like an eggshell." And ...
— David and the Phoenix • Edward Ormondroyd
... an unlucky dish. The Harmonie, empty of cargo, was like an eggshell in the water. She bounced and rolled and bounded from wave to wave, half of the time her screw out of the water. The breakfast did not nourish many. Far on the horizon could be seen the destroyer and the cruiser sweeping ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... head of one sturdy badmash cracked like an eggshell under the butt of the bold tar's musket; a second received the terrible hook square in the teeth; and a third, no other than Parmiter himself, was caught round the neck at the next lunge of the hook, and flung, with a mighty heave, full into the midst of the defenders. ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... a fluffy chicken when it first sidles out of its eggshell into the wide, wide world; and said: "Oh, I do hope I haven't a smudge on ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... thing in an eggshell. No doubt you are acquainted with the situation over the line. You know, excepting one or two big concessions, no Americans own land on the Mexican side. The land is all farmed under leases and sub-leases. If a Chink or a Jap or a wandering American hayseed wants to open up ...
— The Desert Fiddler • William H. Hamby
... hackmatack, so small that he feared the rush of the bull might break it down. It did, indeed, crack ominously when the headlong bulk reared upon it; but it stood. And Sandy felt as if every branch he grasped were an eggshell. ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... with sandbanks lying off them; but a coast with a shelving beach, and pretty deep water, right up to it. If you get cast on a coast like that of Portugal, it is certain death. Your ship will get smashed up like an eggshell, against those rocks you are talking of, and not a soul gets a chance of escape; while if you are blown on a flat coast, you may get carried within a ship's length of the beach before you strike, and it is hard if you can't get a line on shore; besides, it is ten to one the ship won't ...
— Held Fast For England - A Tale of the Siege of Gibraltar (1779-83) • G. A. Henty
... the hermit, "and we are fitted out for longish voyages and rough weather. Besides, it is not so much of an eggshell as you suppose. I made it myself, and took care that it should be fit for the work required of it. The wood of which it is made, although light, is very tough, and it is lined with a skin of strong canvas which is fixed to the planks with tar. This makes the craft watertight as well as strong. ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... soul grown effeminate. The factory of Sevres had lent Elegant boxes with ornament Culled from gardens where fountains splashed And golden carp in the shadows flashed, Nuzzling for crumbs under lily-pads, Which ladies threw as the last of fads. Eggshell trays where gay beaux knelt, Hand on heart, and daintily spelt Their love in flowers, brittle and bright, Artificial and fragile, which told aright The vows of an eighteenth-century knight. The cruder ...
— Sword Blades and Poppy Seed • Amy Lowell
... was gradually circling to the rear of his opponent. It was a funny sight to see them duck the swinging butt and try to jab him at the same time. The Tommy nearest me received the butt of the German's rifle in a smashing blow below the right temple. It smashed his head like an eggshell. He pitched forward on his side and a convulsive shudder ran through his body. Meanwhile, the other Tommy had gained the rear of the Prussian. Suddenly about four inches of bayonet protruded from the throat ...
— Over The Top • Arthur Guy Empey
... vanished; the twelve-inch armoured conning-tower cracked like an eggshell; the barbette collapsed like the crust of a loaf, and the big 9.2 gun lurched backwards and lay with its muzzle staring helplessly at the clouds. The deck crumpled up as though it had been burnt parchment, ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith |
