"Conch" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to the dining-room. The women of the house seemed not to feel that the sound had meaning for them. Five minutes passed by. The elderly manservant, Crowther, appeared in the doorway exasperatedly. He looked with appeal at Gerald. The latter took up a large, curved conch shell, that lay on a shelf, and without reference to anybody, blew a shattering blast. It was a strange rousing noise, that made the heart beat. The summons was almost magical. Everybody came running, ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... blue with the flag of the UK in the upper hoist-side quadrant and the colonial shield centered on the outer half of the flag; the shield is yellow and contains a conch shell, lobster, and cactus ...
— The 1997 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... of this great ocean, our days seem all too short, as we search among the rocks and in the little pools for the curiosities of the sea-side. Here are shells, and shells, and shells,—from the great conch, which you put up to your ear to hear the sound of the sea within, to the tiny things which we find stored away in little round cases, which are all fastened together in a string, like the rattles of ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... advanced. From the fields came the lowing of the cows, as they waited impatiently for the bars of the pastures to be let down. A herd of sheep was driven along the road, raising a cloud of dust. From farm houses came the barking of dogs and the not unmusical notes of conch or tin horns, summoning the "men folks" to ...
— The Outdoor Girls of Deepdale • Laura Lee Hope
... appearance to coral is the conch jewelry, sets of which have been sold for $300. The tint is exquisite, but liable to fade when exposed to the sun. It is made from the great conch, common in Southern Florida and the West Indies. The shells are imported into Europe by thousands, and cut up ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 362, December 9, 1882 • Various
... the late autumn of 1799 Lord Portsmouth was staying with the Hansons before his marriage (November 23, 1799) with Miss Norton, sister of Lord Grantley. In rough play he pinched Byron's ear; the boy picked up a conch shell which was lying on the ground, and hurled it at Lord Portsmouth's head, missing it by a hair's breadth, and smashing the glass behind. In vain Mrs. Hanson tried to make the peace by saying that Byron did not mean the ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... fire—a slow one—baked the clay into a rigid stone-like sheath inside the logs and presently the sticks were burned away. The women had cooked the meats by an open fire and spread the dinner on a table of rough boards resting on poles set in crotches. At noon one of them sounded a conch shell. Then with shouts of joy the men hurried to the fireside and for a moment there was a great spluttering over the wash basins. Before they ate every man except Abe and Samson "took a pull at the jug—long or short"—to quote a ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller
... Link, and listened carefully while the Professor reeled off the familiar story of the taking of Mahdi. They witnessed the stirring and entertaining dinner, and when the Professor had finished, and Mahdi had resumed his conch in the ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson
... heat away from the torrid zone, and ice from the frigid; or, bottling the caloric away in the vesicle of its vapour, it first makes it impalpable, and then conveys it by unknown paths to the most distant parts of the Earth. The materials of which the coral builds the island, and the sea-conch its shell, are gathered by this restless leveller from mountains, rocks, and valleys, in all latitudes. Some it washes down from the Mountains of the Moon in Africa, or out of the gold-fields of Australia, or from the mines of Potosi; others from the battle-fields of Europe, or from ...
— The Ocean and its Wonders • R.M. Ballantyne
... second one commenced in a neighbouring quarry—commenced, but not further prosecuted, evidently because it would not answer, from the soft, chalky material of the wall on one side. Its external shape of the conch is that of the ass's ear. The aperture, through which the light now enters from its further end, and from a height of one hundred and twenty feet, was till lately not known to exist; it not being supposed that the Ear had ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... landed, we could see the white, shining streets and houses,—just as calcareous as they could be; the black negroes; the pea-green water in the harbor; the tall cocoa-nut trees, and about five million conch-shells, lying at the edges of the docks. The colored people here live pretty much on the conch-fish, and when we heard that, it accounted for the shells. The poorer people on these islands often go ...
— A Jolly Fellowship • Frank R. Stockton
... transparent lights him to his prey. And now the horned and unhorned kind, Whose lair is in the wood, sore-famished, grind Their sounding jaws, and, chilled and quaking, fly Where oaks the mountain dells embranch on high: They seek to conch in thickets of the glen, Or lurk, deep sheltered, in some rocky den. Like aged men, who, propp'd on crutches, tread Tottering, with broken strength and stooping head, So move the beasts of earth, and, creeping low, Shun the white flakes ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... were bare. The long black hair streamed loosely. Two of them wore heavy necklaces of green stones, red pebbles, and shell beads. The last comer carried only a single string of shell beads with an iridescent conch fastened to it in front. Ear-pendants of turquoises hung from the ears of ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... The bait-skiff conch-horn sounded. The boat had entered the narrows. 'Twas coming slowly through the quiet evening—laden with bait for the fishing of to-morrow. Again the horn—echoing sweetly, faintly, among the hills of Twin Islands. 'Twas Moses Shoos that blew; there was ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... long table was piled with boiled potatoes, cords of boiled corn on the cob, squash and pumpkin pies, hot biscuit, sweet pickles, bread and butter, and honey. Then one of the girls took down a conch shell from a nail and, going to the door, blew a long, fine, free blast, that showed there was no weakness of ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... Mr Stevenson, after the first breakfast, did his literary work, until the sound of a conch summoned the family to a lunch, or second breakfast, about eleven o'clock. After this there was rest and music till four, and then outdoor work or play, lawn-tennis being a very favourite pastime, and in the evening they ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Margaret Moyes Black
... light, so that the glory illuminated the darkness of the dungeon where she lay. At His birth he came as Vishnu, for the moment showing Himself with all the signs of the Deity on Him, with the discus, with the conch, with the shrivatsa on His breast, with all the recognised emblems of the Lord. But that form quickly vanished, and only the human child lay before His parents' eyes. And the father, you remember, taking Him up, passed through the great locked doors and all the rest of it, and carried Him ...
— Avataras • Annie Besant
... and portieres were swaying as if in a high wind, with the coming and going of many persons; there was a murmur of voices; sounds of the moving of heavy furniture could be heard, and the rattle of silver plates and dishes. From the highest tower a loud blast upon a conch summoned from far and near all the ...
— Herodias • Gustave Flaubert
... a line of automobiles and motorcycles, and amidst the joyous sound of drums and conch shells, Miss Bletch, Mr. Wright, and myself, flower-garlanded from head to foot, drove slowly ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... cross latticework. The bars of the screen were daubed over with red paint, and hung with rows of spider-shells also painted red. Some poles projecting above the others two to four feet had painted jaws of the dugong and large conch shells (Fusus proboscidiferus) fixed to the top, and numerous other dugong bones and shells were scattered along the front. On the ground along the foot of the screen was a row of stones painted ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray
... tracks, across a land of moors and pine-woods, picturesque enough, but wild and lonely, where we came in broad daylight on huge wolves, prowling round the flocks of goats, which the goatherds still call, as in the most primitive times, by blowing on conch shells. Two days' march brought us within sight of the little town of Thomar, and at nightfall we reached our halting place—a horrible "hospedaria," in the kitchen of which we took refuge, chilled, and aching with fatigue. Aumale dandled the children in the chimney-corner, ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... testimony tells of the almost general use of sea shells as necklace ornaments, which found their way into the interior by barter or as ceremonial gifts. The chiefs of the tribe were fond of wearing a disk cut from a conch-shell, and these were also prominent in religious rites, ranking among the modern tribes as did the turquoise among the people of the Southwest. A necklace of bear claws marks the man of distinction, and sometimes ...
— The Vanishing Race • Dr. Joseph Kossuth Dixon
... the trail through wind and darkness, the chief blowing a conch-shell for the crew. In the straw shanty where my hosts had spread their mats that I might have the full occupancy of their comfortable home, we found Mrs. Seventh Man making tea for me. Vanquished Often sat apart in the shadow, ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... conch-shells blowing and fish-horns' twang. Over and over the Maenads sang: "Here's Flud Oirson, fur his horrd horrt, Torr'd an' futherr'd an' corr'd in a corrt By ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... my head, in the pitiless storm, In caverns dark and deep; My couch of ooze is pleasant and warm, And soft and sweet my sleep. I rise again when the winds are still, And the waves have sunk to rest, And call, with my conch-shell, strong and shrill, My mate to ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... for its pole, the base of the axle and the cluster of beautiful-looking bamboo trees for its socket-pole, looked resplendent with that celestial armour of great lustre, took his bow Gandiva and the conch-shell given to him by the gods, commenced to exhibit those celestial weapons in order. And as those celestial weapons had been set, the Earth being oppressed with the feet (of Arjuna), began to tremble with (its) trees; ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... farmer told the whole story, and Ram, taking pity on him, gave him a conch shell, and showed him how to blow it in a particular way, saying, "Remember! whatever you wish for, you have only to blow the conch that way, and your wish will be fulfilled. Only have a care of that money-lender, for even magic is not proof against ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Collected by Joseph Jacobs
... his face, shook up his conch, and talked with him. It was interesting to talk with him—until he learned her name. Oh, yes, Blank was her name, she replied innocently, and Sir George Blank was her brother. Sir George Blank, ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... men were we before the mists had cleared, The low white mists of morning heard the war-conch scream and bray; We called upon Bhowani and we gripped them by the beard, We rolled upon them like a flood and washed their ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... away, and soon returned with two conch-shells filled to the brim with pure, clear sea-water. Dr. Sculpin counted three grains of white sand into one shell, and three grains of yellow sand into the other shell, with ...
— A Little Book of Profitable Tales • Eugene Field
... one shell of peculiar beauty—my favorite in the whole collection—a small conch, covered with rich, dark veins. Each of the visitors successively took up this shell, and by words and gestures expressed her admiration, evidently showing that she had an eye for beauty—this was on the occasion of the parting visit of my ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... sea: 12 nm Disputes: none Climate: tropical; marine; moderated by trade winds; sunny and relatively dry Terrain: low, flat limestone; extensive marshes and mangrove swamps Natural resources: spiny lobster, conch Land use: arable land 2%; permanent crops 0%; meadows and pastures; 0%; forest and woodland 0%; other 98% Environment: 30 islands (eight inhabited); subject to frequent hurricanes Note: located 190 km north of the Dominican Republic in the ...
— The 1992 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... I peeped in at Connie's door the first thing, and saw that she was raised a little more than usual; that is, the end of the conch against which she leaned was at a more acute angle. She was sitting staring, rather than gazing, out at the wild tumult which she could see over the shoulder of the down on which her window immediately looked. Her face was paler ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 3 • George MacDonald
... which had seen its best days, we were accommodated with a mouldy chamber containing two cot-beds, two chairs, and a cracked pitcher on a washstand. The mantel-shelf was ornamented with three big pink conch-shells, resembling pieces of petrified liver; and over these hung a cheap lurid print, in which a United States sloop-of-war was giving a British frigate particular fits. It is very strange how our own ships never ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... between you and me I wish you didn't," returned Hankinson, somewhat relieved to hear the ghost talk, even if her voice did sound like the roar of a conch-shell with a bad case of grip. "I may say to you that, aside from a certain uncanny satisfaction which I feel at being permitted for the first time in my life to gaze upon the linaments of a real live misty ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... than England's widest, the Thames. We now approached the low, reedy banks of Butler's Island, and passed the rice-mill and buildings surrounding it, all of which, it being Sunday, were closed. As we neared the bank, the steersman took up a huge conch, and in the barbaric fashion of early times in the Highlands, sounded out our approach. A pretty schooner, which carries the produce of the estate to Charleston and Savannah, lay alongside the wharf, which began to be crowded with negroes, jumping, dancing, shouting, laughing, and clapping ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... lad," he said. "Now, let us send this boat over the river as fast as she can go. And bear in mind—keep your own shape at all times unless you can change it out of sight of prying eyes." They pulled at the oars. "Oh yes, I nearly forgot. Among the effects placed in your sea chest you will find a conch shell. Hold it to your ear, Christopher, as children do to hear the sea. You will be able to hear my voice, if ever you should ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson
... mauley a red herring, whilst a white table-cloth (the centre of his motions) would proclaim some mysterious rite, must to the young ladies have seemed a merman suddenly come up from the sea, without sound of conch; whilst to him the large deputation from female Megara furnished an extra theatre for the inspection of Greek beauty. 'There was no river mouth visible, the operation being performed in the briny sea itself;' and, so far from this being unusual, ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... steps leads up to the Cathedral door; at the foot of the steps are two large stone lions; the houses on each aide of the stage have coloured awnings from their windows, and are flanked by stone arcades; on the right of the stage is the public fountain, with a triton in green bronze blowing from a conch; around the fountain is a stone seat; the bell of the Cathedral is ringing, and the citizens, men, women and children, are passing ...
— The Duchess of Padua • Oscar Wilde
... frugal diet, lying on the ground. And many of those bodies were without flesh and without blood, without marrow, without entrails, and with limbs separated from one another. And here and there lay on the ground heaps of bones like masses of conch shells. And the earth was scattered over with the (sacrificial) contents of broken jars and shattered ladles for pouring libations of clarified butter and with the sacred fires kept with care by the ascetics. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... have a chance to retaliate. They would serenade him. Bob Holliday was full of it. Harry Weathervane was very active. He was going to pound on his mother's bread-pan. Every sort of instrument for making a noise was brought into requisition. Dinner-bells, tin-pails, conch-shell dinner-horns, tin-horns, and even the village bass-drum, were ...
— The Hoosier School-boy • Edward Eggleston
... a land in the sun-bright deep, Where golden gardens glow, Where the winds of the north, becalmed in sleep, Their conch shells never blow." ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... from floor to ceiling, with all sorts of curios, brought from foreign parts, evidently by the worthy owner of the dwelling, when returning home after his many cruisings in strange waters—conch shells from the Congo and cowries from Zanzibar; a swordfish's broken spear from the Pacific, and a Fijian war-club; cases of stuffed humming-birds from Rio, and calabashes from the Caribbean Sea; a beautiful model, in the finest ivory work, of a Chinese ...
— On Board the Esmeralda - Martin Leigh's Log - A Sea Story • John Conroy Hutcheson
... the museum too, which contains some curious specimens of Chinese and Japanese arms and armour, and the various productions of the two countries, besides many strange things from the Philippine and other islands. I was specially interested in the corals and shells. There were splendid conch shells from Manilla, and a magnificent group of Venus flower-baskets, dredged from some enormous depth near Manilla. There were also good specimens of reptiles of all sorts, and of the carved birds' heads for which Canton is famous. They look very like amber, ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... into a bedroom came out softly in the glow. A room of matting and marble-topped, bottle-littered walnut table, of white iron hospital-cot and curly horsehair divan, a dapple-marble mantelpiece of conch-shell, medicated gauze, bisque figurines, and hot-water kettle; in the sheerest of dimity, still dainty of ribbon, the figure of ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... expression; and her complexion was so clear, that an old gentleman, who belonged to the Society of Friends, and who was of course not much addicted to poetic comparisons, used to say he could never look at her without thinking of the clear pink and white of a beautiful conch-shell. She was scrupulously neat, and had something of that chastened coquetry in dress, which is apt to characterize the handsome women of her orderly sect. Her drab-colored gown, not high in the neck, was bordered by a plain ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child
... population of the district came in, and within the radius of a mile the grass and banana houses clustered as thick as they could stand. Beautiful Hilo in a short time swelled from a population of 1000 to 10,000; and at any hour of the day or night the sound of the conch shell brought together from 3000 to 6000 worshippers. It was a vast camp-meeting which continued for two years, but there was no disorder, and a decent quiet ruled throughout the strangely extemporized city. A new morality, a new social ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... deux and just about as warlike. Both men shook their weapons and shouted a few insults, then settled down to a quiet conversation. Fasimba was garbed in the same type of hideous and fear-inspiring outfit as Ch'aka, differing only in unimportant details. Instead of a conch, his head was encased in the skull of one of the amphibious rosmaroj, brightened up with some extra tusks and horns. The differences between the two men were all minor, and mostly a matter of decoration or variation of weapon ...
— The Ethical Engineer • Henry Maxwell Dempsey
... kind, such as the Spaniards brought formerly to America, and chiefly to Jamaica, Hispaniola, and Cuba, where, being previously marked, they feed in the woods all day, and are recalled to their pens at night by the sound of conch shells. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... influence. She ate and drank like a hungry girl, washed up for herself rather than let Madge touch anything she could help, and looked from the window into a dull court of dreary, blighted-looking turf divided by flagged walks, radiating from a statue in the middle, representing a Triton blowing a conch—no doubt intended to spout water, for there was a stone trough round him, but he had long forgotten his functions, and held a sparrow's nest with streaming straws in his hand. This must be the prison-yard, where alone she ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... have written to tell him that, for me, it had come true; and I thought, forbye, that, if the great powers go on as they are going, and the Chief Justice delays, it would come truer still; and the war-conch will sound in the hills, and my home will be inclosed in camps, before the year is ended. And all at once—mark you, how Mayne Reid is on the spot—a strange thing happened. I saw a liana stretch across the bed of the brook ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... fifteen days in Sicily. On coming into the Bay of Palermo—which opens between the two mighty naked masses of the Pelligrino and the Catalfano, and extends inward along the "Golden Conch"—the view inspired me with such admiration that I resolved to travel a little in this island, so ennobled by historic memories, and rendered so beautiful by the outlines of its hills, which reveal the principles of Greek art. Old pilgrim ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... quiver, Stinging their bard from lungs to liver— To work my ruin, or my cure, Up starts thy pen, Anacreon Moore! In vain I pour my shower of roses, On which the matchless fair one dozes, And plant around her conch the graces, While jealous Venus breaks her laces, To see a younger face promoted, To see her own old face out-voted; And myrtle branches twisting o'er her, Bow down, each turn'd a true adorer. Up starts ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent
... heart, but he has no head. He fools himself. You do not understand in this country, you are progressive. But he has no judgment, and he is fooled." She stooped quickly, took up one of the white conch-shells that bordered the walk, and, with an apologetic inclination of her head, held it to Dr. Archie's ear. "Listen, doctor. You hear something in there? You hear the sea; and yet the sea is very far from ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... long-eared bat their length nearly equals that of the head and body. The form is characteristic in each of the families; in most the "earlet," or tragus, is large, in some cases extending nearly to the outer margin of the conch; its office appears to be to intensify and prolong the waves of sound by producing undulations in them. In the Rhinolophidae, the only family of insectivorous bats wanting the tragus, the auditory bullae reach their greatest size, and ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... oars are also used, worked on either side. These canoes carry a hundred men or more, and make long voyages, often to Fiji, on the east, and lo! the Navigators Islands, on the north. When sailing forth for war covered with armed men, blowing conch-shells and flourishing their clubs and spears, they have a very formidable appearance. Many smaller single canoes came off to us ringing fruits and fowl of all sorts. They are a very fine race of ...
— The Cruise of the Mary Rose - Here and There in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... pairs of hands and a head of cast-iron, for, not content with blowing through a big conch-shell, he must needs stand up to it, swaying with the sway of the flat-bottomed dory, and send a grinding, thuttering shriek through the fog. How long this entertainment lasted, Harvey could not remember, for he lay back terrified at the sight of the smoking swells. He fancied he heard a ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling
... task awaits you; you must ascertain the meaning of the family connections. With Mr. Conch you are on speaking terms; you know him as one of the shells. But the utmost you can recall about his wife is that she is one of a whole flock of ologies. What significance does this relationship possess? You are uncertain. But do not thumb the dictionary yet. Pass ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... because I was so used to thinking of him on the lonely island, I imagined a big conch-shell being hurled at him from somewhere. Then Jerry and I ...
— Us and the Bottleman • Edith Ballinger Price
... Adair, the southern Indian priest wore upon his breast "an ornament made of a white conch-shell, with two holes bored in the middle of it, through which he ran the ends of an otter-skin strap, and fastened to the extremity of each, a buck- horn white button." [Footnote: Hist. Am. Indians, ...
— The Problem of Ohio Mounds • Cyrus Thomas
... artificial flowers beneath crystal bells. A collection of cross-bows, arrows, and knives recalled a Febrer, captain of a corvette belonging to the king, who made a voyage around the world near the close of the eighteenth century. Purplish bivalves and enormous nacre-lined conch shells lay ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... reasonable to believe that once it was found that sound could be produced by blowing across the top of a hollow pipe, the most natural thing to do would be to try the same effect on all hollow things differing in shape and material from the original bamboo. This would account for the conch shells of the Amazons which, according to travellers' tales, were used to proclaim an attack in war; in Africa the tusks of elephants were used; in North America the instrument did not rise above the whistle made from the small bones of a deer ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... a dozen of them as bewitching as any Nixes that ever spread their nets for soft-hearted young Ritters in the old German romance waters. Neptune in a triumphal progress, with his Naiads tumbling about him, was no better off than Whitey and Pypey. They had, to be sure, no car, nor conch shells, nor dolphins; but, as Thompson remarked, these were unimportant accessories, that added but little to Neptune's comfort. The nymphs were the essential. The spectacle was a saddening one for us, I confess; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... place to land. Two of the people from the ship having pushed in among the rocks and landed the natives soon came to them, snatched their handkerchiefs off their heads and ran away with them, but dropped them on being pursued. Soon afterwards they sounded a conch-shell, which brought numbers of them down to the beach. The bay appeared to be well sheltered and to afford good anchorage ground. The soil of the country for the most part a red clay. The productions Mr. Miller thought the same as are commonly ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... also the she-oak-tree, which is said to emit a curious wailing sound during the quietest state of the atmosphere, when there is not a breath of wind to move the branches or the leaves. This tree is found growing near the sea in Australia, and is said to have borrowed the murmur of the conch-shell. It has proved to be the inspiring theme of many a local poet. The flowers in this garden are as attractive as the trees; fuchsias, roses, and camellias are in great perfection and variety, flanked by a species of double pansies and a whole army of brilliant ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... awakened to the fact that he was no longer on land, but afloat on a tiny world with an autocracy and an authority of its own. He was in a tiny world, he saw, where his career and his traditions were not to be reckoned with, where he ranked no higher than conch-niggers and beach-combers and cargadores. He was a dungaree-clad greaser in an engine-room, and he was promptly ordered back with the rest of his crew. He was ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... with your conch-shells sounding, come in the sleepless night. Dress me with a crimson mantle, grasp my hand and take me. Let your chariot be ready at my door with your horses neighing impatiently. Raise my veil and look at my face proudly, O Death, ...
— The Gardener • Rabindranath Tagore
... the sun. Her snowy little foot and pink toes looked, on the rocks, like a new kind of shell, and I told her I was afraid a gentleman who was seeking shells on the other side of the island would come and take it for a conch shell, and put it in his pocket for his little children. She shouted at this; and then threw back her head, with a' silent laugh, like Leatherstocking, showing all her little pearly teeth,—so pretty with her rosy cheeks and streaming hair. I actually seem ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... walking Stewart, as if you were doing your thousand miles in a thousand hours for a thousand dollars, and were sure of winning the money? Believe me, my friend, the world has many such martyrs, unknown, obscure, suffering men, whose names Rumor never blows through her miserable conch-shell,—and I am one of them. As Bully Bertram says, in Maturin's pimento play,—"I am a wretch, and proud of wretchedness." A child, the offspring of your own loins, is something worth watching for. Such a father is your true Tapley; ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... and there, however, was a full-grown, tall, and slender, but defective one, what lumbermen call a kouchus tree, which they ascertain with their axes, or by the knots. I did not learn whether this word was Indian or English. It reminded me of the Greek [Greek: kogchae], a conch or shell, and I amused myself with fancying that it might signify the dead sound which the trees yield when struck. All the rest of the pines had ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... rays; O'er the white floor successive shadows move, As rise and break the ruffled waves above.— 275 Around the nymph her mermaid-trains repair, And weave with orient pearl her radiant hair; With rapid fins she cleaves the watery way, Shoots like a diver meteor up to day; Sounds a loud conch, convokes a scaly band, 280 Her sea-born lovers, and ascends ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... festivals, brayed desperately, calling to "Stables." Engine after engine toiling home along the spurs at the end of her day's work whistled in answer till the whistles were answered from the far bank. Then the big gong thundered thrice for a sign that it was flood and not fire; conch, drum, and whistle echoed the call, and the village quivered to the sound of bare feet running upon soft earth. The order in all cases was to stand by the day's work and wait instructions. The gangs poured by in the dusk; men stopping to knot a ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... the square? There's a fountain to spout and splash! In the shade it sings and springs; in the shine such foam-bows flash On the horses with curling fish-tails, that prance and paddle and pash Round the lady atop in the conch—fifty gazers do not abash, Though all that she wears is some weeds round her waist in a sort ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... lie far out, we can even see their topmasts while they are at anchor. Of sounds of men, beyond those of our own labourers, there reach us, at very long intervals, salutes from the warships in harbour, the bell of the cathedral church, and the low of the conch-shell calling the labour boys on the German plantations. Yesterday, which was Sunday - the QUANTIEME is most likely erroneous; you can now correct it - we had a visitor - Baker of Tonga. Heard you ever of him? He is a great man here: he is accused of theft, rape, judicial murder, private poisoning, ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... were clamoring and supplicating for water faster than a hundred dippers there could pass it up. The dippers were of all garbs and periods, from Indians and rustics to boys in cadet uniform. The vessels with which they dipped were of all shapes and metals, from conch shells and calabashes to cups of transparent china, and goblets of gold and silver. Amongst the dippers, conspicuous by his benevolent face and clothing of a butternut color, was the Great Dipper himself, ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... the Hinkle House was as neat a little parlor as there was in the black-waxy country. It was all willow rocking-chairs, and home-knit tidies, and albums, and conch shells in a row. And a little upright ...
— Options • O. Henry
... time, the time appointed for service, a drum was beat and the conch shell blown; the same shell which had been used to give the war call. Directly all those canoes were covered with men, and they were plunging into the water and wading to shore. These were Thakomban and his warriors. Not blacked and stripped and armed for fighting, but washed ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner
... had a multiple origin. The ram's horn of the early Briton and the perforated conch-shell of the South Sea Islander are natural trumpets; when they were copied in brass and other metals they evolved rapidly to become the varied wind instruments typified to-day by the cornet and the tuba. In the same way the ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton
... different in quality from the AEgean or Ionian sea? What would he find distinctive of their spirit? The Tritons of these shallows must be of other form and lineage than the fierce-eyed youth who blows his conch upon the curled crest of a wave, crying aloud to his comrades, as he bears the nymph away to caverns where the billows plunge ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... went in after a couple of hours or so, I found her lying on the conch, propped up with pillows. She lay looking out of the window on the lawn at the back of the house. A smile hovered about her bloodless lips, and the blue of her eyes, though very gray, looked sunny. Her white face showed ...
— The Seaboard Parish Volume 1 • George MacDonald
... we found a superb sight was to be had of all those steps, lighted from above and cutting off their shadows with marvelous precision. I then heard the hum of which I have already spoken: the immense granite conch had as many echoes ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... of the din that so heavily Fell on our senses as midnight drew near; Trumpets and bugles and conch-shells, so cleverly Sounded the welkin with happy New Year! With jewsharps and timbrels, and musical thimbles, Tin-platters for cymbals, and frying-pans too; Dutch-ovens and brasses, and jingles and glasses, With reeds of all classes, together they ...
— Poems • George P. Morris
... blue and yellow, beside a sweetmeat seller's basket, and showed his heap of cakes that they were well-browned and full of butter. From the "Cape of Good Cheer," where many bottles glistened in rows inside, came a braying upon the conch, and a flame of burnt brandy danced along the bar to the honour and propitiation of Lakshmi, that the able-bodied seaman might be thirsty when he came, for the "Cape of Good Cheer" did not owe its prosperity, as its name might suggest, to any Providence of our theology. But most ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... from the conch on which he had thrown himself. He stood waiting. Now was the decisive moment; and Toussaint knew it ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... a superior, was not unmindful of his own worth. The sounds at first were those of lamentation, so low as scarcely to be audible, and plaintive and sweet as the sighs of the wind through the curled conch shell. "Oh Manito," he said, "where are thy children, once as plenty as the forest leaves? Ask of the month of flowers for the snows that 'Hpoon scatters from his hand, or of the Yaupaae for the ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... parlor, where the claw-footed chairs and dark mahogany tables shone like mirrors; andirons, with their accompanying shovel and tongs, glistened from their covert of asparagus tops; mock-oranges and conch-shells decorated the mantelpiece; strings of various-colored birds eggs were suspended above it; a great ostrich egg was hung from the centre of the room, and a corner cupboard, knowingly left open, displayed immense treasures of ...
— The Legend of Sleepy Hollow • Washington Irving
... ornamental shell pin, two small hatchets, and a sharp-pointed flint knife or lance, eight inches long, having a neck or projection at the base, suitable for a handle, or for insertion in a shaft, on the right side. The earth behind the skull being removed, three enormous conch shells presented their open mouths. One of my assistants started back as if the ghost of the departed had come to claim the treasure preserved, in accordance with superstitious notions, for its journey to the "happy lands." The alarm seemed to be a warning, for at the moment ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXIV., No. 12, March 18, 1871 • Various
... Aitutaki you can't sell fish. The law forbids it, but do you suppose people don't fish on that account? Why, a man goes out in his canoe and fishes like mad. He brings in his canoe, and as he approaches the beach he's blowing his pu, the conch-shell, to let people know he has fish. Fish to sell or to barter? Not at all. He wants the honor of giving them away. Now, if he makes a big catch, do you see, he has renown. People say, 'There's Taiere, who caught all those fish yesterday.' ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... Herakles, of the Ganges land, where grows no wine, is plainly Krishna, who carries club, discus, and conch. The Greek cities Methora and Kleisobora are Mathur[a] and Krishna-pur, 'Krishna-town'; the latter on the Jumna, the former near it on the same river, capital of the clan which venerated Krishna as its chief hero and god, the Y[a]davas. Megasthenes says, also, that Herakles' daughter is Pandaie, ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... in the square? There's a fountain to spout and splash! In the shade it sings and springs; in the shine such foam-bows flash On the horses with curling fish-tails, that prance and paddle and pash Round the lady atop in her conch—fifty gazers do not abash, Though all that she wears is some weeds round her waist in a ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... stay-maker, tailor and linen-draper, who originally wound him up and set him a-going, for whose sole convenience he lives, having withal, by way of paint to his ashy countenance, a couple of little conch-shell tufts, tawny-yellow, (that being the latest to be had at the perfumer's,) on his upper lip; the representative and embodiment of all the latest new improvements, patents, and contrivances in apparel, Mr. Tiffany ...
— Chanticleer - A Thanksgiving Story of the Peabody Family • Cornelius Mathews
... into the office, where Thorpe and Shearer and Andrews, the surveyor, lay asleep. There quietly he built another fire, and filled the water-pail afresh. By the time this task was finished, the cook sounded many times a conch, ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... already rattled through the street, chasing away the latest vestige of night's sanctity with the jingle-jangle of its dissonant bells. A milkman was distributing the contents of his cans from door to door; and the harsh peal of a fisherman's conch shell was heard far off, around the corner. None of these tokens escaped Hepzibah's notice. The moment had arrived. To delay longer would be only to lengthen out her misery. Nothing remained, except to take down the bar from the shop-door, leaving the entrance free—more ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... living on the continent, ruderata in high northern latitudes.* (* "Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society" volume 8 1852 page 190. Mr. Brown calls them extinct species, which may mislead some readers, but he merely meant extinct in England. See also Jeffreys, "Brit. Conch." page 174.) The Cyrena fluminalis and the Unio littoralis, to which last I shall presently allude, ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... Of a sudden, from the sea-side, a single shrill cry was heard. A moment more, and the blast of numerous conch shells startled the air; a confused clamor drew nearer and nearer; and flying our eyes in the direction of these sounds, we impatiently awaited what was ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... carefully. It was clear sand, with no sign of life other than an occasional conch or other shellfish. This was to be expected, since marine life tended to collect around reefs, rocks, pilings, wrecks, and similar things. As they approached the reef, coral heads and outcroppings began to ...
— The Wailing Octopus • Harold Leland Goodwin
... crater—wavy, serrated, frothy, like tar congealed or stiffened on a flat surface. One piece that I sketched was of the shape of a large leaf, upon which all the fibres were marked. It measured ten feet by four. Another bore a resemblance to a great conch-shell. Many were impressed with the roots of shrubs and the images of various surrounding objects—snail-shells, pebbles, twigs, and the like. On a larger scale, bubbling brooks, waterfalls, and whirlpools were represented—now no longer a burning flood, but stiff, stark, and motionless. One ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... the old chief's house, where a feast was prepared; and having eaten as much food and drunk as much angona as they could, they got up and commenced dancing in the most frantic manner, making a most hideous uproar with their drums, conch-shells, and other instruments, and shrieking and howling at the top of their voices. After this, the principal chiefs entered the houses of the late chief's wives, armed with a sort of bowstring. With these they proceeded ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... gate in the palisade was thrown open, a conch- shell was blown, and the waiting inhabitants began to pour into the enclosure with all the eagerness and excitement of an audience crowding into the unreserved portions of a theatre, and in a very short time the great square was full, the front ranks ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... sextant, polished daily by his big, clumsy hands, hung over the mantel-piece, on which were many dusty treasures—the mahogany spoke of an old steering-wheel; a whale's tooth; two Chinese wrestlers, in ivory; a fan of spreading white coral; a conch-shell, its beautiful red lip serving to hold a loose bunch of cigars. In the chimney-breast was a little door, and the Captain, pulling his son into the room after that call upon Mrs. North, fumbled in his pocket for the key. "Here," he said; ...
— An Encore • Margaret Deland
... then there rang along the valley the sound of a distant conch-shell. The soldiers groaned, roused up, and each looked for his own ...
— The Man Without a Country and Other Tales • Edward E. Hale
... when each could name only his own heart's dearest as her superior. He saw, too, why Aldobrandino had likened her to a peach-blossom, for her complexion had that even delicate flush, not white and red in spots, but roseate everywhere, like the heart of a conch shell or the breast ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... princes are seated on rows of thrones in the assembly hall. Suddenly a blast of conch-shell and trumpet resounds, as Indumati, in bridal robes, supported by Sunanda, is ushered in and stands in the walk left between them. It was delightful to ...
— Glimpses of Bengal • Sir Rabindranath Tagore
... out by Fate When an immortal maid and mortal man Should share each other's nature knit in bliss. The brave Iberians far the beach o'erspread Ere dawn with distant awe; none hear the mew, None mark the curlew flapping o'er the field; Silence held all, and fond expectancy. Now suddenly the conch above the sea Sounds, and goes sounding through the woods profound. They, where they hear the echo, turn their eyes, But nothing see they, save a purple mist Roll from the distant mountain down the shore: It rolls, it sails, it settles, ...
— Gebir • Walter Savage Landor |
