Sneer

“ The censorious young gentleman has the reputation among his familiars of a remarkably clever person, which he maintains by receiving all intelligence and expressing all opinions with a dubious sneer, accompanied with a half smile, expressive of anything you please but good-humour. ”

“ But bodyguards are no longer forthcoming, and train-guards are far from satisfactory. The fat man sat on, with a sneer-grin, very faint but very effective, round his nose, and a solidly-planted posterior. He quite enjoyed the pantomime of the young foreigners. The other passengers said something to him, and he answered laconic. Then they all had the faint sneer-grin round their noses. A woman in the corner grinned jeeringly straight in Francis' face. ”

“ So the sneers that we often hear about Christian 'philanthropists taking tracts to people when they want soup,' and the like, are excessively shallow sneers, and indicate nothing more than this, that the critic has superficially diagnosed the disease, and is wofully wrong about the remedy. ”

“ LADY SNEERWELL.
Nay but we should make allowance [—] Sir Benjamin is a wit and a poet. MARIA.
For my Part—I own madam—wit loses its respect with me, when I see it in company with malice.—What do you think, Mr. Surface? SURFACE.
Certainly, Madam, to smile at the jest which plants a Thorn on another's Breast is to become a principal in the mischief. LADY SNEERWELL.
Pshaw—there's no possibility of being witty without a little [ill] nature—the malice of a good thing is the Barb that makes it stick.—What's your opinion, Mr. Surface? ”

“ LADY SNEERWELL. Beg her to walk in. Now, Maria [,] however here is a Character to your Taste, for tho' Mrs. Candour is a little talkative everybody allows her to be the best-natured and best sort of woman.
MARIA. Yes with a very gross affectation of good Nature and Benevolence—she does more mischief than the Direct malice of old Crabtree.
SURFACE. Efaith 'tis very true Lady Sneerwell—Whenever I hear the current running again the characters of my Friends, I never think them in such Danger as when Candour undertakes their Defence. ”

“ SIR PETER.
Aye and what is very extraordinary in all our disputes she is always in the wrong! But Lady Sneerwell, and the Set she meets at her House, encourage the perverseness of her Disposition—then to complete my vexations—Maria—my Ward—whom I ought to have the Power of a Father over, is determined to turn Rebel too and absolutely refuses the man whom I have long resolved on for her husband—meaning I suppose, to bestow herself on his profligate Brother. ”

“ SURFACE. I have not seen either since I saw you—but I can inform you that they are at present at Variance—some of your stories have taken good effect on Maria.
LADY SNEERWELL. Ah! my dear Verjuice the merit of this belongs to you. But do your Brother's Distresses encrease?
SURFACE. Every hour. I am told He had another execution in his house yesterday—in short his Dissipation and extravagance exceed anything I have ever heard of.
LADY SNEERWELL. Poor Charles!
SURFACE. True Madam—notwithstanding his Vices one can't help feeling for him—ah poor Charles! ”

“ Cut everything like a creeper across them and some day you will find you have cut a snare." "A what?" asked Rag, as he scratched his right ear with his left hind foot.
"A snare is something that looks like a creeper, but it doesn't grow and it's worse than all the hawks in the world," said Molly, glancing at the now far-away red-tail, "for there it hides night and day in the runway till the chance to catch you comes." ”

“ It has its opportunity to utter itself. The Snore is the Voice of the Soul! And not only the Soul of the individual but of the Soul of the race. All the experiences of man, in his ascent from the mire to his present altitude, are retained in the Subconscious Mind—his fights, his struggles, his falls, his recoveries. And his dreams and nightmares are racial memories of these things. Snores are the language in which he expresses them. Interpret the Snore, and you have the psychic history of the ascent of man from Caliban to Shakespeare! ”

“ Strange to say the contents of the tin had not diminished by so much as a single pinch, and such a fit of sneezing seized the old scoundrel that he rolled on the grass in the greatest distress, quite unable to put the usual spell upon me. All the other Druids, with abject terror expressed on their faces, sank at once into the ground. The form of the head Druid, sneezing and sneezing and sneezing, gradually faded away before my eyes, and long after he had completely disappeared the sneezing could still be heard. ”

“ To the Sirens first shalt thou come, who bewitch all men, whosoever shall come to them. Whoso draws nigh them unwittingly and hears the sound of the Siren's voice, never doth he see wife or babes stand by him on his return, nor have they joy at his coming; but the Sirens enchant him with their clear song. ”

“ Nevertheless, the air of mystery hung about him like a dark cloud. He could not sleep. And not being able to sleep, he meditated.
He had already begun the eternal round of thoughts that will revolve through a fellow's brain at night, when he heard a sound—the soft crush of a skin boot in the snow it seemed. He listened and thought he heard it again, this time more distinctly, as if the person were approaching his igloo. A chill crept up and down his spine. ”

“ Little Deer shook his head slowly with a strange reverential expression on his face, and taking the boy by the hand he led him back to the camp, for an insane person is as sacred as a god to the red men. ”

“ If anyone who is speaking is interrupted by a sneeze, whether his own or that of another person present, whatever he is saying is held to be proved true by the occurrence. ’Γειά σου, cry the listeners, καὶ ἀλήθεια λές (or λέει) , ‘Health to you, and you speak (or he speaks) truth.’ If however no one present is in the act of speaking when the sneeze is heard, the first phrase only is used, ‘Health to you,’ or by way of facetious variant, νὰ ψοφήσῃ ἡ πεθερά σου, ‘May your mother-in-law die like a dog [889] .’ In either case the prayer for good health can benefit only the sneezer ”

“ But before the sentence was uttered, Sneak had broken through himself, and stood half-submerged in the snow.
“Ha! ha! ha! you musn’t count your chickens before they’re hatched,” said Joe, laughing; “but you may score one, now you have broken the shell.”
“I got in that time,” said Sneak, now winding through the bushes with much caution, as if it were truly in his power to diminish the weight of his body by a peculiar mode of walking. ”

“ Let us descend into this beautiful valley, for as yet we are only standing upon the borders of the “Land of the Melodious Sneezers” called in their soft and musical tongue Lâ-aah-chew-lâ.”
The pronunciation of this word again threw my poor parents into a perfect whirlwind of sneezes; but nothing daunted, they advanced to meet the natives, who at first sight fell prostrate on their faces and for several moments kept up a low plaintive hum of sneezes, with their noses thrust into the grass. ”

“ It is important that all persons sitting in the same room as the seer should be at arm's length away from him—farther if possible. Silence should be uniformly observed by those present. A recorder should be at hand to set down everything the seer may give voice to. If any questions are addressed to the seer while the sitting is in progress, they should be spoken in an undertone and as nearly a monotone as may be so that the seer is not suddenly surprised into consciousness of his surroundings, and the psychic thread thereby broken. ”

“ Mad or sane, it is certain that Snarley, under a kinder Fate, might have been something more splendid than he was. Mystic, star-gazer, dabbler in black or blackish arts, he seemed in his lowly occupation of shepherd to represent some strange miscarriage of Nature's designs; but Mrs. Abel, who understood the secrets of many hearts, always maintained that Snarley, the breeder of the famous Perryman rams, had found the calling to which he had been fore-ordained from the foundation of the world. ”

“ On a couch, covered with the skin of the spotted leopardo, at the far end of the room, was Senor Skinny wrapped in the slimy folds of a monster serpent, its head drawn back, the neck arched, jaws wide apart and reaching toward the parted lips of Senor Skinny, who stared with entranced vision, unable to move, into the fiendish eyes that to him seemed to be the caressing, inviting eyes of "Senorita Serpente" burning with love! ”

“ But Varia spoke, in a voice straight from the land of dreams, opening upon her eyes misty with sleep.
"One does not forget!" she said drowsily. "One loses a thing, for a long time, it may be, but some shadow of that thing is always left, even to a fool. Is it not so?"
"Ay, if thou sayest," said Nerissa, as readily as she would have agreed that pigs were butterflies if her lady had willed them so. But Varia was asleep before she spoke.
All through that night Nerissa held her nursling in fond, anxious arms that knew no weariness, brooding over her as a mother with her child. ”

“ A sea-voice moaning like a ghost;
⁠And fits of fiery weather!
The flying Syrinx turned and sped
⁠By dim, mysterious hollows,
Where night is black, and day is red,
⁠And frost the fire-wind follows. ”

“ These two types—of which there are many varieties—achieve their psychic development by quite opposite means. The positive seer works with effort, throwing out the soul-images by the power of his will, perceiving them with more or less accuracy, and thereafter turning them over in the mind, reasoning and questioning concerning their import and meaning. The passive seer, on the contrary, works not at all and makes no effort, the visions coming slowly, almost imperceptibly, and in most cases having a literal interpretation. ”

“ The little superstition is as widely distributed as the flint arrow-heads. Just as the object and use of the arrow-heads became intelligible when we found similar weapons in actual use among savages, so the salutation to the sneezer becomes intelligible when we learn that the savage has a good reason for it. He thinks the sneeze expels an evil spirit. Proverbs, again, and riddles are as universally scattered, and the Wolufs puzzle over the same devinettes as the Scotch schoolboy or the Breton peasant. ”

“ Great snails crawled upon the tufts of rank grass wet with the autumnal dews that the sun had failed to dry, and upon the glistening hart's-tongue ferns, and they looked just the kind of snails that witches would collect to make a hell-broth. ”

“ Neela yet kind and calm, Beholds a knot of Snakes, that fill A basket made of palm! No fear her blameless mind alarms: But quick with scornful joy, One basely holds her by the arms; One grasps her fondling boy. The sire himself, with gesture wild, His thoughtless offspring takes ”

“ The nereids are, like the fairy ladies, beautiful and capricious, and are likewise invariably blue eyed and golden haired. 'Nereid born' refers to the changeling idea. Nereids travel on whirlwinds, and, like the Celtic fairies, cause spinning spirals of dust on highways. They confer gifts on mortals, and accept offerings of food. ”

“ Nero (Irritably.)
The wine! (The Page, startled, presents the salver, from which Nero takes the goblet with unsteady hand. Page is in the act of fleeing.)
Stay! 58 (Page stops and turns tremblingly.)
Never dare
Again to look like—anyone! Beware! (Page’s head shakes a timid negative. Nero stares into goblet and muses.)
Blood’s red too. Ah, a woman is the grape
Ripe for the vintage, from whose flesh agape
Glad feet tonight shall stamp the hated ooze! ”

“ After what seemed like a long walk, he sighted his third snail and turned left. For a moment he considered speaking to the snail, remembering that in all the stories he'd heard speech was standard equipment for all forms of life in fairyland, but he refrained because of the petulant look on the snail's face. ”

“ Perhaps a senorita, more venturesome, with her black hair hanging in two long plaits behind each shoulder, has run to her iron-barred window to smile at me, and then penitently fallen before her patron saint imploring forgiveness, or hurried to confess her sin to the wily padre. ”

“ Corresponding to Middle Low German snore, Anglo-Saxon snoru, Middle English snore (obsolete in English) , Old Frisian snore, Old Icelandic snor, snør, ‘daughter-in-law’ (Gothic *snuzô, feminine, is by chance not recorded) . A common Aryan term for ‘daughter-in-law’ (compare also other terms common to Aryan for degrees of relationship, such as Sohn, Tochter, &c.) , in the Aryan form snusã (Sanscrit snušã, Old Slovenian snŭcha) , and Aryan snusū̆s, in Latin nurus (for snusus) , Greek νυός (for *σνυσύς) . ”

“ The danger at this supreme moment is that the seer will be surprised into full waking consciousness. During the process of abstraction which precedes every vision or series of visions, the consciousness of the seer is gradually and imperceptibly withdrawn from his surroundings. He forgets that he is seated in this or that room, that such a person is at his right hand, such another at his left. He forgets that he is gazing into the crystal. He hears nothing, sees nothing, save what is passing before the eyes of his soul. ”

“ A few disordered movements betray a brief excitement on the part of the Snail, and then everything ceases: the foot no longer crawls, the front-part loses its graceful curve, the tentacles become limp and give way under their own weight, dangling feebly like a broken stick. ”