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Shell   /ʃɛl/   Listen
Shell

noun
1.
Ammunition consisting of a cylindrical metal casing containing an explosive charge and a projectile; fired from a large gun.
2.
The material that forms the hard outer covering of many animals.
3.
Hard outer covering or case of certain organisms such as arthropods and turtles.  Synonyms: carapace, cuticle, shield.
4.
The hard usually fibrous outer layer of some fruits especially nuts.
5.
The exterior covering of a bird's egg.  Synonym: eggshell.
6.
A rigid covering that envelops an object.
7.
A very light narrow racing boat.  Synonym: racing shell.
8.
The housing or outer covering of something.  Synonyms: case, casing.
9.
A metal sheathing of uniform thickness (such as the shield attached to an artillery piece to protect the gunners).  Synonyms: plate, scale.
10.
The hard largely calcareous covering of a mollusc or a brachiopod.



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"Shell" Quotes from Famous Books



... in praising the particular republic in which his own money was invested, and each begged me to place mine with his. In the course of one day I was offered a part ownership in four coffee plantations, a rubber forest, a machine for turning the sea-turtles into fat and shell, and the good-will and fixtures of a dentist's office. Except that I obtained some reputation on board as a young man of property, which reputation I endeavored to maintain by treating everyone to drinks in the social hall, my inquiries led to ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis

... love the wave, And the sailor brave, Who often meets his doom On the ocean vast, And sleeps his last In a shell and coral tomb. ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders

... with her shattered wall Black with the miner's blast, upon her height Yet shows of what she was, when shell and ball Rebounding idly on her strength did light:— A Tower of Victory! from whence the flight Of baffled foes was watched along the plain: But Peace destroyed what War could never blight, And laid those proud roofs bare to Summer's rain— On which the iron shower ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron

... the boiled chicken that at least they could understand, though it had funny-hooking accompaniments in the sauce. And Hal's report of some savoury jelly which he had once encountered would have deterred them from the pink transparency in the shape of a shell, if they had not seen Bessie getting on very well with it, Miss Fosbrook happily perceiving and cutting short Annie's intended inquiry whether it were nice. To her great relief, this was the only want of manners betrayed by her little savages, and she was able to keep her attention ...
— The Stokesley Secret • Charlotte M. Yonge

... rappee was? the good woman pointed to the place; and I took up a scollop-shell of it, refusing to let her weight it, and filled my box. And now, Mrs. Smith, said I, ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson

... her head. "I like your sweet things better. Bobbie and I are the ones who don't like lobster. He says that I'm a sort of oasis in a desert of shell-fish." ...
— Glory of Youth • Temple Bailey

... hears only the magic music of the sea sirens—and the sky blackens, the winds leap to their track of ruin, the great deep rises wrathful and murderous, bellowing for victims, and Cyclone reigns? Thundering waves sweep over and bear away the frail palaces that decked the strand, and even while the shell symphony still charms the ear, the child's rosy feet are washed from their sandy resting-place; she is borne on howling billows far out to a lashed and maddened main, strewn with human drift; and numb with horror she sinks swiftly to a long and final rest among purple ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans

... pride of race. And while she watched, the twilight fell, and the colours turned to purple and grey, and the lights twinkled out in the shipping and along the shore—hundreds and hundreds of lights; and gradually, like the murmur of the sea in a shell, the roar of the city grew on the ear, till at last the little boat reached the Stairs, where the old grey fortress looks down on the new grey bridge, ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad

... pair of green eyes, that seemed always on the look-out for something going wrong, was very fat, and moved as if it was too much trouble to her to walk across the room; while Friskarina's coat was of the richest tortoise-shell, and though she was quite plump, and as sleek as satin, yet there was not a more lively little creature in all Catland; it quite did one good to see her jumping over the foot-stools in the princess's drawing-room. She had a prodigious longing, sometimes, to jump over cousin ...
— Tales From Catland, for Little Kittens • Tabitha Grimalkin

... some chairs for her to sit upon," said Mrs. Caxton; "and I shall send some china cups, that she may not have to drink out of a cocoa-nut shell." ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner

... On account of the cancer of slavery and the resulting doctrine of State Rights. Nationality and liberty, the opposite view. The former was the party of action, and, therefore, though in a minority, it was bolder and more determined. But the shell of materialism dropped from the North, and it was aroused with electric energy when Sumter was fired on; there was no passion, only such fervid resolve to preserve our nation as the world never before saw. The struggle over, there were no State trials, ...
— Toasts - and Forms of Public Address for Those Who Wish to Say - the Right Thing in the Right Way • William Pittenger

... and retired determinedly into her shell. She was seated almost in the centre of the circle, between her father and John Vernon, and the leaping light of the fire showed up her face and figure in varying shades of colour. Now she was a rose-maiden, dress, hair, and face glowing in a warm pink hue; anon, the rose changed into a ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... made a slightly impatient movement. He was becoming weary of throwing away ideas on the well-dressed shell of ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens

... mentioned, anchored in our waters, with the probable intention to fire upon that expedition moving in the same waters. Unless the expedition should first attack—in which case we shall interfere—we shall be obliged to consider a discharge of shot or shell from or into our waters, from the armed schooners of her Majesty, as an act seriously compromising the neutrality of the two nations. I hope, therefore, that no ...
— General Scott • General Marcus J. Wright

... the front" received the most explicit instructions from their superior officers to take the party only to the quiet sectors where there was no fighting going on, each detail from the three governments successively brought the party directly under shell-fire, and each on the first day of the "inspection." It was unconsciously done: the officers were as much amazed to find themselves under fire as were the members of the party, except that the latter did ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)

... Molucca Islands, and other parts of the East. The trees commence bearing in the seventh year, and continue fruitful until they are seventy or eighty years old. Around the nutmeg or kernel is a bright, brown shell. This shell has a soft, scarlet covering, which, when flattened out and dried, is known as mace. The best nutmegs are solid, and emit oil when pricked ...
— The Whitehouse Cookbook (1887) - The Whole Comprising A Comprehensive Cyclopedia Of Information For - The Home • Mrs. F.L. Gillette

... plenty. So the two halves of the company relieved each other in standing guard and picnicking. Meantime, however, the rebels, from the woods just in front, were paying their respects with two-inch shell, which shrieked and crashed through the branches, bursting over us, around us, and many of them altogether too near to be pleasant. Moreover, by one of those blunders which cannot always be avoided, some of our own men, mistaking us, opened fire on ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... Cannot hands which had the strength To shove that stranded iceberg off our shores, And send the shatter'd North again to sea, Scuttle his cockle-shell? What's Brunanburg To Stamford-bridge? a war-crash, and so hard, So loud, that, by St. Dunstan, old St. Thor— By God, we thought him dead—but our old Thor Heard his own thunder again, and woke and came Among us again, and mark'd the sons of ...
— Queen Mary and Harold • Alfred Lord Tennyson

... years of improvising, construction with squared posts, and later with quarterings (studs), came into practice. There was probably little thought of plastering walls during the first two decades, and when plastering was adopted, clay, or clay mixed with oyster-shell lime, was first used. The early floors were of clay, and such floors continued to be used in the humbler dwellings throughout the 1600's. It can be assumed that most of the dwellings, or shelters, of the Jamestown settlers, ...
— New Discoveries at Jamestown - Site of the First Successful English Settlement in America • John L. Cotter

... campaign I returned to Fort Sanders, Wyoming, remained there until spring of 1872, when we were ordered out to the Muscle Shell or Nursey Pursey Indian outbreak. In that war Generals Custer, Miles, Terry and Crook were all engaged. This campaign lasted until ...
— Life and Adventures of Calamity Jane • Calamity Jane

... the coast, Lured young Achilles from his haunted sleep And drave him out to dive beyond those deep Dim purple windows of the empty swell, His ivory body flitting like a ghost Over the holes where flat blind fishes dwell, All to embrace his mother throned in her shell. ...
— Georgian Poetry 1913-15 • Edited by E. M. (Sir Edward Howard Marsh)

... flies, French tirailleurs rush round; As stubble to the lava tide, French squadrons strew the ground; Bomb-shell and grape and round-shot tore, still on they marched and fired— Fast from each volley grenadier and voltigeur retired. "Push on, my household cavalry!" King Louis madly cried: To death they rush, but rude their shock—not ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis

... Cagayan provinces are found chestnut-trees, which produce fruit. In other districts are found pines and other trees which yield certain very large pine-nuts, with a hard shell and a pleasant taste, which are called piles. [74] There is abundance of cedar which is called calanta, a beautiful red wood called asana, [75] ebony of various qualities, and many other precious woods ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVI, 1609 • H.E. Blair

... ribbon in her hair. Kathleen and Julia were in the white dresses brought them by Cousin Ann, and Mrs. Carey wore her new black silk, made with a sweeping little train. Her wedding necklace of seed pearls was around her neck, and a tall comb of tortoise shell and pearls rose from the low-coiled knot of ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... The clinging thin shell covered him to his chest, then to his throat. At that point he reached into a drawer in a workbench beside him and drew out two small, hollow hemispheres of glass. These ...
— The Radiant Shell • Paul Ernst

... manager continued, "The thing that straightened me out on the question of our different ranks was that scrap where Captain Charlie and Private John found themselves caught in the same shell hole with no one else anywhere near except friend enemy, and somebody had to do something darned quick. Do you ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright

... formed, had their faces painted, and were very imperfectly covered with seal-skins. Their chief article of clothing, indeed, was a small cloak which they wore on the side on which the wind comes when walking or sitting. They lived chiefly on shell-fish, and in search of them wandered from place to place. They were considered as among the most dull and stupid of the human race. No wonder, indeed, considering the few objects on which their minds could be expanded. A farther acquaintance with these tribes has shown ...
— Captain Cook - His Life, Voyages, and Discoveries • W.H.G. Kingston

... decelerating. The man's efforts must have been terrific, taxing all his enormous driving power, for he at that time was without doubt more exhausted than they. But he succeeded, and he was a haggard-faced, feverish shell of himself when at last he had them in a dangling drunken halt in the air a ...
— The Bluff of the Hawk • Anthony Gilmore

... believe that I said, out loud, "I'm going to be killed. This is my last sortie." At any rate, I thought it. Made one last effort and came out in ligne de vol, as nearly as I could judge, about one hundred and fifty metres from the ground. It was an ugly-looking place for landing, trenches and shell-holes everywhere. I was wondering in a vague way whether they were French or German, when I fell into the most restful sleep I've ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall

... were shell holes that had been recently filled and covered over with bricks and fresh earth. It was like walking upon newly made graves. On either side of us were gaping cellars into which the houses had dumped ...
— With the French in France and Salonika • Richard Harding Davis

... wide-expanding cavern floors and flanks; Could one have looked from high how fair the sight! Like these, the dolphin, on Bahaman banks, Cleaves the warm fluid, in his rainbow tints, While even his shadow on the sands below Is seen; as through the wave he glides, and glints, Where lies the polished shell, and branching corals grow. No massive gate impedes; the wave, in vain, Might strive against the air to break or fall; And, at the portal of that strange domain, A clear, bright curtain seemed, or crystal ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various

... from me the only woman I ever did see that could cook b'ah meat fit to eat? Well, I reckon not! Besides, what she can do to most anything is simply enough to scare you. She can take common crawfish, like the niggers catch all around here—and a shell off of a mussel, and out of them two things she makes what she calls a 'kokeeyon of eckriveese,' and—say, man! You bet your bottom dollar Madame Delchasse ain't going to get away from here. Don't matter a damn if she ain't got over putting hair-oil in her cocktails, like they do at New Orleans—we ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough

... final triumph of Waterloo, not battle only, but worse destroyers than shot and shell—fatigue and disease—had been carrying off our stoutest, ablest, healthiest young men, each of whom represented, alas! a maiden left unmarried at home, or married, in default, to a less able man. The strongest went to the war; each who fell left ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley

... dry the deck can be fitted, 3/8-inch veneer pins being used for fixing on, and care being taken to get it true to position. A center line is drawn down the under side of the deck, and marks made to correspond at the stern and transom on the shell. ...
— Boys' Book of Model Boats • Raymond Francis Yates

... they the only advantages. The belt of oaks beyond the Dunkard Church, the West Wood, was peculiarly adapted for defence. Parallel ledges of outcropping limestone, both within the thickets and along the Hagerstown road, rising as high as a man's waist, gave good coyer from shot and shell; the trees were of old growth, and there was little underwood. To the north-east, however, and about five hundred yards distant across the fields, lay the East Wood, covering the slopes to the Antietam, with Poffenberger's Wood beyond; while further to the left, the North ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson

... can baffle; Or a lock that's a puzzle of wards within wards; Or, if your colt's forefoot inclines to curve inwards, Horseshoes they hammer which turn on a swivel And won't allow the hoof to shrivel. 370 Then they cast bells like the shell of the winkle That keep a stout heart in the ram with their tinkle; But the sand—they pinch and pound it like otters; Commend me the gypsy glass-makers and potters! Glasses they'll blow you, crystal-clear, ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning

... about sixteen. A mass of golden hair fell daintily from a small head, and the oval of her comely face was as shapely as an egg, and white with the transparent whiteness seen when the hands of a housewife hold a new-laid egg to the light to let the sun's rays filter through its shell. The same tint marked the maiden's ears where they glowed in the sunshine, and, in short, what with the tears in her wide-open, arresting eyes, she presented so attractive a picture that our hero bestowed upon it more than a passing glance before ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol

... in the morning the ships began to move. The night was dark but very still and clear, and soon the noise of slipping anchor cables warned the enemy of what was afoot. Then a very hail of shot and shell fell upon the Federal boats. Burning fire ships too were sent down upon them, and the red light of battle lit up the darkness. Yet through the baptism of fire the vessels held on their way undaunted. The forts were passed, the Confederate fleet disabled ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall

... happened in an instant. Even as the dome shattered under the copter's shell and Dark recognized the imminence of death, the groundcar twisted out of control and careened from the highway. He felt it spinning over and over, and then blackness ...
— Rebels of the Red Planet • Charles Louis Fontenay

... If the diameter of an egg ten degrees west of its North Pole is two and eleven-tenths inches, what is the value of the shell unfilled? I thought you might help ...
— The Rover Boys in New York • Arthur M. Winfield

... to keep off the fisherman's hook; the squirrel never cracks an empty nut; the crow soon learns the harmlessness of the scarecrow. But man, though he may have twenty times wriggled off the hook, the patient angler catches him at last. He always cracks the empty shell, then cries: 'Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.' This cry he might be spared would he learn a lesson from the squirrel, who weighs his nuts and throws away the light, hollow shell.... And there are scarescrows, the harmlessness of which the human biped learns not in a a ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... to whom it had come, too, watching him every morning setting forth with a rough towel across his arm, wondered whether the old man would not this time leave his spirit swimming in the chill waters of the Serpentine—so near that spirit seemed to breaking through its fragile shell. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... paddlings,—killing her, you observe, always urging her graveward. Yes, and yet there is nothing in these letters to show how much she must have loathed me!" he said, in a mild sort of wonder. He appeared senile now, the shrunken and calamitous shell of the man he had been ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell

... struggling in the dark, drift more and more towards mysticism. It seems to spring up everywhere,—the usual reaction of a society whose life is based upon positivism, the overthrow of ideals, empty pleasures, and soulless striving after gain. The human spirit begins to burst its shell, which is too narrow, too much like a stock exchange. One epoch draws to an end, and then appears a simultaneous evolution in all directions. It has struck me often with amazement that, for instance, the ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... Miss Campbell, raising her tortoise shell lorgnette in order the better to see the writhing form ...
— The Motor Maids at Sunrise Camp • Katherine Stokes

... such terrible things." Shell number two, and high explosive. "You won't let them take me ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... Auffidius, Who hearing of our Martius Banishment, Thrusts forth his hornes againe into the world Which were In-shell'd, when Martius stood for Rome, And durst not once ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... moulds had been heated quite hot, and then some bear's fat, which is like lard, had been put inside of them. Holding the moulds shut, and placing them in very cold water, they kept turning them around until the melted fat had hardened into a thin shell exactly the size of a bullet. Then a small puncture was made through this thin casing of fat, and the interior carefully filled up with fine sand. It was not difficult then to stop up the orifice with a little fat. It was then carefully coloured like a bullet, and at a distance could ...
— Three Boys in the Wild North Land • Egerton Ryerson Young

... The green covers at home comprised, by the law of their purpose, no tribute to letters; it was of a mere rich kernel of economics, politics, ethics that, glazed and, as Mrs. Newsome maintained rather against HIS view, pre-eminently pleasant to touch, they formed the specious shell. Without therefore any needed instinctive knowledge of what was coming out, in Paris, on the bright highway, he struck himself at present as having more than once flushed with a suspicion: he couldn't otherwise at present be feeling so many fears confirmed. There were "movements" he ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James

... felt that curious sense of lightness—as if all that weighed and burdened had melted away, leaving only a thin, slight shell, that would hardly keep to earth at all. He tramped up and down, looking out of the window every moment, not knowing what ...
— The Song Of The Blood-Red Flower • Johannes Linnankoski

... War 20 150. (A) Temporary Shelter for Heads. (B) Gallery of a Kayan Long House 24 151. Kenyah Dayongs wearing Masks 30 152. Tomb of the Wife of a Chief of the Long Patas (Klemantan). The white Discs were formerly made of Shell, but nowadays European Crockery is used, and a German Firm supplies Dinner-plates provided with two Perforations which facilitate the attachment of the Plates 34 153. Tomb of a Sekapan (Klemantan) Chief 36 154. The Grave of Kuling, Daughter of Boi Jalong, the principal Kenyah Chief of the ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall

... side, with the lady opposite, Desglands did his best to charm her with his conversation; but she pretended not to hear him, and kept looking at his rival. In the agony of jealousy, Desglands, as he was holding a fresh egg in his hand, involuntarily crushed it; the shell broke, and its contents bespattered his rival's face. Seeing him raise his hand, Desglands seized it and whispered: Sir, I take it as given. The next day Desglands appeared with a large piece of black ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer: The Wisdom of Life • Arthur Schopenhauer

... Tomb Cat that dyd. Being a torture Shell and a Grate faverit, we had Him berrid in the Guardian, and for the sake of inrichment of the Mould, I had the carks deposeted under the roots of a Gosberry Bush. The Frute being up till then of a smooth kind. But the nex ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 402, Supplementary Number (1829) • Various

... and do it under my supervision. It only needs this, now." She thrust two heavy tortoise-shell pins into the coils on either side ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick

... with the first American troops that entered the trenches on the Western front. He was with the first American troops to cross the German frontier. He was with the artillery battalion that fired the first American shell ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons

... flowers marked the brown earth about the trees, and a beautiful magnolia, white as a bride, shed its shell-like petals in an angle beneath a window; the gold of the berberis glowed at the end of the path; and the greenery was blithe as a girl in clear muslin and ribbons. The blackbirds chattered and ran, and in turn flew to the pan of water placed for them, and drank, ...
— Spring Days • George Moore

... portrait, the amused reader is glad to find that all were not of so edifying a mind. Her lovely hair that vied with gold was partly veiled and partly strayed around her ivory neck. Her little ear, a curved shell, bore up the golden mesh. Under the smooth clear white brow she had curved black eyebrows without a criss-cross hair in them, and these disclosed and heightened the clear white of the skin. And her nose, too—not flat nor arched, not long nor snub, but beyond the fineness of ...
— Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln - A Short Story of One of the Makers of Mediaeval England • Charles L. Marson

... shelling the post. The shimmering desert was eagerly scanned by the officers' field glasses, and all kinds of things were seen and not seen. Meanwhile someone went to look at the "Dud," and found not a shell but a large stone, still quite hot. It finally dawned upon everyone that we were bombarded from the heavens, and not by the Turk. It was a meteorite, still preserved amongst the battalion's war souvenirs, which had ...
— The Seventh Manchesters - July 1916 to March 1919 • S. J. Wilson

... But in the supplement to Alfric's vocabulary, and in another belonging to the same epoch, there are important additions to this list: the salmon, the trout, the lobster, the bleak, with the whelk and other shell-fish. But we do not notice the turbot, sole, and many other varieties, which became familiar in the next generation or so. The turbot and sole are indeed included in the "Treatise on Utensils" of Neckam, as are likewise the lamprey (of which King John ...
— Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine • William Carew Hazlitt

... seem to have 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 reed of ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton

... came to a shallow mere edged with reeds, with wild fowl swimming upon it, and others flying swiftly over on their way to the nest. At the far end of the lake, but yet in the water, was a dim castle settling down into the murk. A gaunt shell it was, rather than a habitable place; its windows were sightless black; only in the towers you could see through them the pale sky behind. The wind ruffled the mere, little cold waves lapped in the reeds; there ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett

... pocket. The very evening before the natives were to have been seized a heavy gale sprang up, and the schooner was driven out to sea. Before many days had gone by she was cast away on an uninhabited island, when all hands, with the exception of Tom Platt, were lost. He supported existence on shell-fish and a few birds he knocked down, while a small cask of water washed ashore saved him from dying of thirst. Just as it was exhausted, he was taken off by a vessel bound for this place. I met him, ...
— The Cruise of the Dainty - Rovings in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston

... was over, the air of Friendship still vibrated from the stir. Bereft of its treasures, the Gilpin house stood an empty shell, facing an unknown future; for beyond the statement that he was from Baltimore, nothing was known ...
— Mr. Pat's Little Girl - A Story of the Arden Foresters • Mary F. Leonard

... by instinct that Zinaida Fyodorovna would not be with us much longer, and, not to let the chance slip, carried off everything she set her eyes on—smelling-bottles, tortoise-shell hairpins, handkerchiefs, shoes! On the day after New Year's Day, Zinaida Fyodorovna summoned me to her room and told me in a low voice that she missed her black dress. And then she walked through all the rooms, with a pale, frightened, and ...
— The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... that lived below the Federal Prison now he wuz the preacher of the hard shell baptist church in this community; This man stayed sick about a year and kept gittin different doctors and none 'uv them did him any good well his wife kept on at him till he decided ter go ter see Dr. Geech. His complaint wuz that he felt something run up his legs ter his thighs. ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration

... tableware, why every generation of this family should have suffered no losses by breakage, was not asked. Every bit, even to baking-powder prizes of green and greasy glass, antedated the Revolution, and the wise and mighty of Smalltown knew no better. A bit of egg shell sticking to a cracked teacup was stolen as a relic of Washington's ...
— Adopting An Abandoned Farm • Kate Sanborn

... were fastening queer looking rings about the bodies of women and children, while still more men were lowering a little boat into the water. But as soon as it touched the waves, it was turned on end and smashed like an egg-shell against the side of the ship. Jan, standing with his legs braced firmly, saw the frightened women and children huddled together. Most of them were very quiet, but some were crying. A few were kneeling on the wet deck, and though their eyes were shut, Jan knew they were not asleep, for their ...
— Prince Jan, St. Bernard • Forrestine C. Hooker

... lovely shell, Small and pure as a pearl, Lying close to my foot, Frail, but a work divine, Made so fairily well With delicate spire and whorl, How exquisitely minute, ...
— Beauties of Tennyson • Alfred Tennyson

... but I shouldn't wonder. The boy was hit by a shell splinter while doin' his duty with exceptional bravery, so the telegram said. 'Twas from Washin'ton, of course. And there was somethin' in it about his bein' recommended for one ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln

... a bit," she said, removing fragments of shell from her lap; and, to put him at his ease again, went on, "Are you interested in little ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 8, 1914 • Various

... worship. The warm pulse of life no longer throbbed in it to animate it; it was no longer the blossom and the fruit of every branch of life; it had its own meaning all to itself. It symbolised worship, and that was enough. The soul was fled; the shell remained, upon the shaping out of which every energy was now concentrated. A manifoldness of rites took the place of individualising occasions; technique was the main thing, and strict ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen

... died thar. He wasn't cold when we found him.... Somers was quick to see a trick. So he propped Queen up an' tied the guns to his hands—an', Jim, the queerest thing aboot that deal was this—Queen's guns was empty! Not a shell left! It beat us holler.... We left him thar, an' hid up high on the bluff, mebbe a hundred yards off. The hosses we left back of a thicket. An' we waited thar a long time. But, sure enough, the half-breed come. ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey

... that the Bricklayers' Picnic took place that day at Shell Mound Park, and to Shell Mound Park he went. He had been to the working-class picnics too often in his earlier life not to know what they were like, and as he entered the park he experienced a recrudescence of all the old sensations. After all, they were his kind, these working ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London

... from the boat, and having blown the water from his nostrils, and snorted loudly, he turned round and seemed astonished to find the solitary little boat so near him. Telling the two boatmen to sit perfectly quiet, so as to allow a good sight, I aimed just below the eye, and fired a heavy shell, which contained a bursting charge of three drachms of fine-grained powder. The head disappeared. A little smoke hung over the water, and I could not observe other effects. The lake was deep, and after vain sounding ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker

... can be avoided, never wash combs, as the water often makes the teeth split, and the tortoise-shell or horn of which they are made, rough. Small brushes, manufactured purposely for cleaning combs, may be purchased at a trifling cost; the comb should be well brushed, and afterwards wiped with a cloth ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller

... had said good-by to her, nearly five years ago, he had known quite definitely. Each time that he had had a glimpse of her on those brief leaves from the Front, he had been more and more sure of the desired direction. Her letters coming up to him under shell-fire had made him even more certain—those letters compassionate with unashamed sincerity, written with a girl's admiration for a man who was jeopardizing his all that she ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson

... commanded; the grim dog obediently came to heel. The pair then proceeded into the woods, which, so they say, as soon as the two entered, were shaken by a violent whirlwind. But at last the priest led his charge to the edge of the pool below the waterfall, then producing a walnut-shell with a hole in it, handed it to the hound ...
— Legend Land, Volume 2 • Various

... an effort of the will he resigned himself to his immediate captivity. They did not mean to take his life, and while there was no hope for the present there was plenty of it for the future. He could be in a far worse case. His unfailing optimism broke through the shell of mortification, and he ...
— The Lords of the Wild - A Story of the Old New York Border • Joseph A. Altsheler

... very many instances the morality of the moralist has outshone the righteousness of the Christian. Yes! and I have seen canoe-paddles carved by South Sea Islanders with no better tools than an oyster-shell and a sharp fish-bone, which in the minuteness and delicacy of their work, as well as in the truth and taste of their pattern, might put to shame the work of carvers with better tools. But that is not the fault of the tools; it is the fault of the carvers. And so, whilst we acknowledge ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren

... my young ward, come home with me; and try to stop that crying soon, for I haven't much patience with brats." In fact, after a few seconds he gave me such hard cuts with his whip that I stopped crying, and, withdrawing myself like a tortoise into my shell, completed the journey without daring ...
— Mauprat • George Sand

... persuaded his wife, children, and relatives, actually carrying away all his kindred; and went to the place where the father was, in order to enjoy the light of the gospel, which had not shone on that country of his. He went in quest of the father, and carried him as a gift a turtle, the shell of which required two men to lift it—so monstrous in size are the turtles in those seas; some of them I have seen and eaten. This chief often made known to the father the state of his soul, and sought spiritual aid in very exact and clear terms; and if he forgot ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, - Volume XIII., 1604-1605 • Ed. by Blair and Robertson

... water. To enable them to do this in the winter, the frog of the foot is almost entirely absorbed, and the edges of the hoof, now quite concave, grow out in sharp ridges, each division on the under surface presenting the appearance of a huge mussel-shell, and serving the office of natural skates. So rapidly does the shell increase, that the frog does not fill up again till spring, when the antlers bud out. With this singular conformation of the foot, it has a lateral spread; ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston

... had got a large pebble between the valves of his shell, and was unable to get it out, was lamenting his sad fate, when—the tide being out—a monkey ran to him, and began ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)

... great day approached Y.D.'s wife shot a bomb-shell at him. "What do you propose to wear for Zen's wedding?" ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead

... then?" demanded one of the big girls. She had very red cheeks, and her black hair was in two glossy braids, crossed and pinned at the back of her head, and surmounted by her mother's shell comb she had let her wear to school that day. She had come out to recess without her hood to ...
— Comfort Pease and her Gold Ring • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... with a speeding Indian canoe, containing two frightened occupants, so intent upon saving themselves they never even glanced up until we had swept by. Thockmorton laughed heartily at their desperate struggle in the swell, and several of the crew ran to the stern to watch the little cockle-shell toss about in the waves. It was when I turned also, the better to assure myself of their safety, that I discovered Judge Beaucaire standing close beside me at the low rail. Our eyes met inquiringly, and he bowed with all the ceremony ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish

... of a gentleman who once took a ride in one of his own subway cars during the rush hour, the device has been named the 'Shontshover' (from 'Shonts' and 'shover'). It is the sublimation of a subway car, a cross between a cartridge and a sardine can. The passengers are packed into the shell with a hydraulic ram, then at high speed are shot through a pneumatic tube against a stone wall. Because of the great number of passengers the Shontshover can carry in a day, the admission price to the tube is to be only ...
— If You Don't Write Fiction • Charles Phelps Cushing

... a process I have wished to see I ran down to the beach myself between whiles. Here was a droll enough scene indeed. They had made one "drawing" and were just casting the seine again as I walked along for half a mile towards the drum-hole.[109] The shell-banks, which are exposed at low tide, were fringed with small children with baskets and bags which they were filling with oysters and conchs. Rose followed me as guide and protector, jabbering away in her outlandish fashion to my great entertainment, and was very much afraid that the ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various

... But not to me, by Heaven! My sweet child, Not like a beggar do I feel before thee, (With a long look at her.) However fair thy youth's consummate glory Envelop thee from top to toe ... thou knowest Not much about my life, thou hast but seen A fragment of its shell, as dimly gleaming In shadows through the op'nings of a hedge. I wish thine eye might pierce the heart of it: As fully as the earth beneath my feet Have I put from me all things low and common. Callst thou that easy, since I now am old? 'Tis true, I've lost some friends by death ere this— ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various

... tree, reaching from 150 to 200 feet in height. The cones are very large, and contain one hundred to one hundred and fifty seeds, which are highly prized by the aborigines as food. They are best when roasted in the shell, cracked between two stones and eaten while hot. In flavor they resemble roasted chestnuts. During the season of the ripening of these seeds the natives grow sleek and fat. That part of the country where these trees most abound is called ...
— Catalogue of Economic Plants in the Collection of the U. S. Department of Agriculture • William Saunders

... morrow. So imperfect does the present seem to them, and so obvious are the possibilities of the future, that they look forward confidently to the overthrow of the old social forms, and the establishment, in their places, of a new society, the embryo of which is already germinating within the old social shell. ...
— Bars and Shadows • Ralph Chaplin

... with a charming smile, 'has put the matter into the shell of a nut; Australia is my plough, and I do not take my hand away until I have finished ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume

... surgeon attached to Prince Christian, had his leg broken by a shell in the battle of Wagram. He lay almost lifeless on the dusty field. Fifteen paces distant, Amedee of Kerbourg, aide-de-camp (I have forgotten to whom), wounded in the breast by a bullet, fell to the ground vomiting blood. Salsdorf saw that if that young man was not cared for ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset

... a misfortune! what a misfortune!" often repeated Pencroft. "If we had but a walnut-shell to take us to Tabor Island! ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne

... aunty dear?" exclaimed the boy, holding fast to his box. "I'll tell you about it. This is a chrysalis; and it seems entirely dead, but it's only the outside that is dead. Inside, where we cannot see it, lies something that is alive; and by and by, when the time comes, this shell will be cast off, for there will be no farther use for it, and out will fly a new lovely creature ...
— Gritli's Children • Johanna Spyri

... In the face of musketry, field artillery declined. Although artillery had achieved some mobility, carriages were still cumbrous. To move a heavy English cannon, even over good ground, it took 23 horses; a culverin needed nine beasts. Ammunition—mainly cast-iron round shot, the bomb (an iron shell filled with gunpowder), canister (a can filled with small projectiles), and grape shot (a cluster of iron balls)—was carried the primitive way, in wheelbarrows and carts or on a man's back. The gunner's pace was the measure of field artillery's speed: the gunner ...
— Artillery Through the Ages - A Short Illustrated History of Cannon, Emphasizing Types Used in America • Albert Manucy

... too long from my country's shores To reckon what state of mind is yours, But as for myself I know right well I would go through fire and shot and shell And face new perils and make my bed In new ...
— Theodore Roosevelt • Edmund Lester Pearson

... ramming it into other folks' business. If he and all his fellows did not do this; if they had not learned to keep their voices down and to muffle unnecessary noises; if they had not built tight covers of reserve about themselves, as the oyster builds a shell to protect his tender tissues from irritation—they would long ago have become a race of nervous wrecks instead of being what they are, the most ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb

... trestle, stood a half-vedro barrel of old vodka, imported from Poland; in a huge silver-mounted shell lay oysters, and a certain particoloured cake, in the shape of a tower, stood out ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky

... indignantly for the last three minutes. "Papoe!" faltered my father, aghast, while the Cyprinidae, mistaking the dip of the spectacles for an invitation to dinner, came scudding up to the bank. "It is all your fault," said Mr. Caxton, recovering himself. "Get me the new tortoise-shell spectacles and a large slice of bread. You see that when fish are reduced to a pond they recognize a benefactor, which they never do when rising at flies or groping for worms in the waste world of a river. Hem!—a hint for the Ulverstones. Besides the bread and the spectacles, just look ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... used in making neckties, gloves, ribbons, and dresses. Silk cloth is woven from the cocoons made by silkworms. A silkworm is about as big as your largest finger. It grows to this size from the egg in one month. In three or four days it spins a shell of silk thread completely surrounding itself. This shell is called a cocoon. Within this ...
— Health Lessons - Book 1 • Alvin Davison

... 1864.—The Valley City took in coal and then proceeded toward Washington, N.C. At 8 p.m. she anchored off Brant Island light-house. May 2d, Monday. We got under weigh at 5 a.m., and proceeded toward Washington.—At 4 o'clock p.m. we anchored off Rodman's Point, and fired a shell into Washington at a number of Confederates. We then got under weigh, and proceeded down below ...
— Reminiscences of Two Years in the United States Navy • John M. Batten

... search he was not unsuccessful, for the beach abounded with shell-fish of various kinds; but Jarwin ate sparingly of these, having been impressed, in former years, by some stories which he had heard of shipwrecked sailors having been poisoned by shell-fish. For the same reason he administered a moderate supply to Cuffy, telling him ...
— Jarwin and Cuffy • R.M. Ballantyne

... handsome. How could any girl, least of all one of Miriam's discernment, forbear to fall down and worship? But deeply Miriam was displeased. She had never been stared at in that fashion before, and promptly retired into her shell when Georgie announced that he had changed his mind about going to town, and would stay to play with Miss Lacy if she had nothing ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling

... gilt group, representing Jesus Christ and the Samaritan woman near Jacob's well, pourtrayed by a basin into which falls a sheet of water issuing from a shell above. Under the basin is ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon

... are suspended four cow-headed Hathor figures in place of the cowry-amulets of more primitive peoples. This affords corroboration of the view that Hathor assumed the functions originally attributed to the cowry-shell. (b) The king's sporran, where Hathor-heads (H) take the place of the cowries of the primitive ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith

... earth itself, this flat surface which lay spread out beneath me; the whole earthly globe, with its populations, multitudinous, feeble, crushed by want, grief and diseases, bound to a clod of pitiful dust; this brittle, rough crust, this shell over the fiery sands of our planet, overspread with the mildew we call the organic, vegetable kingdom; these human flies, a thousand times paltrier than flies; their dwellings glued together with filth, the pitiful traces of their tiny, monotonous bustle, of their comic ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev

... on a porringer; A velvet dish: fie, fie! 'tis lewd and filthy: Why, 'tis a cockle or a walnut-shell, A knack, a toy, a trick, a baby's cap: Away with it! come, ...
— The Taming of the Shrew • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]

... P. and O. mail steamer Macedonia came into this port last night with five shell holes between wind and water. She reports having been attacked by a hostile submarine ten miles to the south-east of the Lizard. Instead of using her torpedoes, the submarine for some reason approached from the surface and fired five shots from a semi-automatic twelve-pounder ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle

... into the jewelers' shops; but I thought I was walking down a block in Broadway. I began to think that all this talk about travel was a humbug; and that he who lives in a nut-shell, lives in an epitome of the universe, and has but little to see ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville

... 'ungry guns. But we've got three, another on the way; It's that wot makes me snarl and set me jor: The wife and nippers, wot of 'em, I say, If I gets knocked out in this blasted war? Gets proper busted by a shell, But . . . wot the ...
— Rhymes of a Red Cross Man • Robert W. Service

... the sky will be a sea-shell pink, with bars of vivid green, lavender and purple playing across it, while in the center will be a misty golden ball as if the sun was trying to shine through. The next instant all may be pitch darkness until this too is chased ...
— Billy Whiskers' Adventures • Frances Trego Montgomery

... life would be continuous, that she would no sooner form friendships (like the present) than relentless fate would thrust her into a new circle. All the initial confidence in herself was gone; her courage was merely a shell to hide the lack. To have the present lengthen into years! But in a few hours she would be upon her way, far lonelier than she had ever been. As Spurlock called her name, she paused ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath

... Aryavart, the Theodidaktoi of Greece, included all knowledge of things occult and essentially divine. The Mercavah of the Hebrew Rabbis, the secular and popular series, were thus designated as only the vehicle, the outward shell, which contained the higher esoteric knowledges. The Magi of Zoroaster received instruction and were initiated in the caves and secret lodges of Bactria; the Egyptian and Grecian hierophants had their apporiheta, or ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various

... been attendant on mighty Hector; in Hector's train he waged battle, renowned alike for bugle and spear: after victorious Achilles robbed him of life the valiant hero had joined Dardanian Aeneas' company, and followed no meaner leader. But now, while he makes his hollow shell echo over the seas, ah fool! and calls the gods to rival his blast, jealous Triton, if belief is due, had caught him among the rocks and sunk him in the foaming waves. So all surrounded him with loud murmur ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil

... remark, as a notable fact, that this resolution was carried out almost literally. Sometimes, a few of the fellows would gather in prayer, while the rest of us fought the guns. Several times, to my very lively recollection we met under fire. Once, I remember, a shell burst right by us, and covered us with dust; and, once, I recall with very particular distinctness, a Minie bullet slapped into a hickory sapling, against which I was sitting, not an inch above ...
— From the Rapidan to Richmond and the Spottsylvania Campaign - A Sketch in Personal Narration of the Scenes a Soldier Saw • William Meade Dame

... suicide talk; I couldn't see why Humphrey was so perturbed about it. Anything that lowered the market price of Premix, at this time, would be to his advantage." She looked at Goode as though he had six legs and a hard shell. "You know, Humphrey, I can't say I exactly ...
— Murder in the Gunroom • Henry Beam Piper

... they advertised him after this manner: "Charles L. Hobson, twenty-two years of age, six feet high, with a slouched hat on, mixed coat, black pants, with a goatee, is stopping at the Tremont Hotel," &c., &c. This was as a bomb-shell to Mr. Hobson, and he immediately took the hint, and with his trunks steered for the sunny South. In a day or two afterwards Henry deemed it advisable to visit Canada. After arriving there he wrote back to his young master, to let him know ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still

... better figure in the world 'n his father hes done. I hope that lily-flower o' hisn will be open in the mornin'. 'Seems if I got softer-hearted 'bout hevin thet boy disapp'inted every day I live. Come summer, he shell hev a run or two on Her every week. Mother 'n me hes got to make up to him for what he loses in not bein' strong an' like other chillren. Mother—she's disposed to spile him jest a leetle. But dear ...
— The Little Gold Miners of the Sierras and Other Stories • Various

... grain, all his faculties absorbed in the solemn question whether he should succeed in cracking his nut, while two or three feathered pilferers stood as near as they dared, anxiously waiting till the great work should be accomplished, the hard shell should yield, ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller

... Shadow, and on that my eyes were intently fixed, till again eyes grew out of the Shadow—malignant, serpent eyes. And the bubbles of light again rose and fell, and in their disordered, irregular, turbulent maze, mingled with the wan moonlight. And now from these globules themselves, as from the shell of an egg, monstrous things burst out; the air grew filled with them; larvae so bloodless and so hideous that I can in no way describe them except to remind the reader of the swarming life which the solar microscope brings before his eyes in a drop of water—things ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton

... to the dog in particular," continued Jack, "proofs of sagacity in animals are very numerous. The nautilus, when he wants to take an airing, capsizes his shell, and converts it into a gondola; then he hoists a thin membrane that serves for a sail; two of his arms are resolved into oars, and his tail performs the functions of a rudder. There are insects ingenious enough to make ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien

... own way: if she wants to talk, let her, and if she wants to be silent, let her alone. She is as delicate as that cup," said the doctor, looking at the shell-like thing which Ellen had ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... to look in the same place for his sixpence, and he found nothing but a cockle-shell. And he never saw anything but a cockle-shell ...
— Welsh Fairy-Tales And Other Stories • Edited by P. H. Emerson



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