"Centre" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that of the upper province voted a liberal appropriation for military expenditure, and increased the efficiency of the militia system. Stores of every kind, and in vast quantities, were forwarded from Quebec and Montreal by brigades of sleighs to Kingston as a centre of distribution for western Canada. A deputation of Indian chiefs from the West was received at the castle of St. Louis, and sent home laden with presents and confirmed in ...
— Neville Trueman the Pioneer Preacher • William Henry Withrow
... between these powers in the ecclesiastical body. But the great separation of the bishops in the several states, and the difficulty of assembling them, gave the pope a mighty advantage, and made it more easy for him to centre all the powers of the hierarchy in his own person. The cruelty and treachery which attended the punishment of John Huss and Jerome of Prague, the unhappy disciples of Wickliffe, who, in violation of a safe-conduct were burned alive ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... than those of the creature's external surface,—a key-stone shaped plate, placed, when in situ, in advance of the little plate between the eyes, which form the head and face of the effigy in the centre of the buckler,—and a side-plate, into which the condyloid processes of the lower jaw were articulated, and which exhibited the processes on which these hinged. There are besides some two or three plates more, whose places I have still to find. The small cast, stained yellow, ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... twilight, with clasped hands, speaking softly and brokenly; or else never speaking at all; only feeling that they were together—they two, who were all in all to each other, while the whole world of life went whirling outside, never touching that sweet centre of complete repose. At last, Olive's full heart ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... the centre of the town he found that Hathelsborough, instead of sinking to sleep within an hour of curfew, according to long-established custom, had awakened to new life. There were groups at every corner, and little knots of folk at doors, and ...
— In the Mayor's Parlour • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... I left these crowds and escaped to the quiet sanctuary of a restaurant in the centre of the town. I remember that some English officers came in and stared at me from their table with hard eyes, suspicious of me as a spy, or, worse still, as a journalist. In those days, having to dodge arrest at every turn, I had a most unpatriotic hatred of those British officers whose stern eyes ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... wild, Tartar-like stables of Connaught, how vast was the transition to that perfection of elegance, and of adaptation between means and ends, that reigned from centre to circumference through the stables at Laxton! I, as it happened, could report to Lord Massey their earlier condition; he to me could report their immediate changes. I won him easily to an interest in my own ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... radiant thread Is every where from centre spread, Like orbs in planetary skies, Enclosed with rounds of various size, This curious frame I aptly call ...
— Aesop, in Rhyme - Old Friends in a New Dress • Marmaduke Park
... the centre of a crowd, composed chiefly of that hideous scum, idle and in rags, insolent and malicious, besotted with ignorance, brutalized by want, and always loafing about the corners. Workmen are scarcely ever ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... was an object[879]. Again and again he urged, it is interesting to note, just those ideals of gradual and compensated emancipation which were so strongly held by Lincoln. In this same month the Spectator thought it was "idle to strive to ignore the very centre and spring of all disunion," and advised a "prudent audacity in striking at the cause rather than at the effect[880]." Three weeks later the Spectator, reviewing general British press comments, summed them ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... years, the house in St. David's Street was the centre of the accomplished and refined society which then distinguished Edinburgh. Adam Smith, Blair, and Ferguson were within easy reach; and what remains of Hume's correspondence with Sir Gilbert Elliot, Colonel ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... scattered them for a while. There was a party that settled at Oyouwayea, or Johnson's landing place, on lake Ontario, about four miles east of the mouth of Niagara River, which is at the mouth of the four-mile creek, for the purpose of getting out of the centre of the other Indians which were ...
— Legends, Traditions, and Laws of the Iroquois, or Six Nations, and History of the Tuscarora Indians • Elias Johnson
... the present century Groton had one characteristic mark, closely connected with the old taverns, which it no longer possesses. It was a radiating centre for different lines of stage-coaches, until this mode of travel was superseded by the swifter one of the railroad. During many years the stage-coaches were a distinctive feature of the place; and their coming and going was watched with great ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. 1, Issue 1. - A Massachusetts Magazine of Literature, History, - Biography, And State Progress • Various
... with some curiosity, noting the bare edges of the floor around the faded strip of cheap carpeting in the centre, the little stand with a white towel over the top, upon which was a lamp and a Bible,—she was glad to see the Bible—the woodcuts from illustrated journals tacked to the walls, and the one straggling geranium in ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... maturity, Leibnitz rose at once to classic eminence. He became a conspicuous figure, he became a commanding power, not only in the intellectual world, of which he constituted himself the centre, but in part also of the civil. It lay in the nature of his genius to prove all things, and it lay in his temperament to seek rapport with all sorts of men. He was infinitely related;—not an individual of note in his day but was linked with him by some common interest or some ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... quantities of sand and seaweed as manure—frequently presents, in the summer, a bustling scene. The village is very scattered: on the right of the beautiful streamlet which flows silently down the valley, and runs across the road just in the centre of the village, stands an old mill; which for many a long year has been wont to throw out its murmuring sound, as the water falls over its broad and capacious wheel. On the other side of the stream, and just opposite the old mill, a few yards from the road, stands a neat, commodious, and well-built ...
— The Village Sunday School - With brief sketches of three of its scholars • John C. Symons
... is the commemoration of some deed done by a Grodonoff, entitling him to use the bear as his heraldic device. This is quite true; and if you enter the picture-gallery of the palace, you will there behold the deed more explicitly represented, in a large oil-painting hung conspicuously in the centre of the wall. The scene of this painting is a forest of old trees, whose grey, gnarled trunks stand thickly over the ground. There is only a little open space or glade in the middle; and this is occupied by three figures, two men and a bear. The bear is between ...
— Bruin - The Grand Bear Hunt • Mayne Reid
... of it. In the first part of the book of Exodus we have a special introduction to the giving of the law; for it records the deliverance of the Israelites from bondage in Egypt, and their journey to Sinai. The Mosaic institutions presuppose a sanctuary as their visible material centre. The last part of Exodus, after the promulgation of the ten commandments and the precepts connected with them, is accordingly occupied with the construction of the tabernacle and its furniture, and the dress and consecration ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... Moorish structure, with two stone pilasters supporting a pointed arch. In the centre is an inscription forbidding to the pious admirers of the marabout the use of the fountain while a drop remains in the Hamadouch. To assist their fidelity, the spring is effectually closed except when all other sources have peremptorily failed, in the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... of the noise—and there I read all that I want to know. It costs a halfpenny a day, runs to six pages, is well printed and brightly composed and contains no advertisements. There is generally a picture in thick black lines in the centre of the first page. Blood being the easy thing for the printer to "feature," the picture generally deals with the cutting off of heads. If it refers to the past, you and I are cutting off the worker's head, severing from a fine ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, October 13, 1920 • Various
... before midnight, as one of the carriers between Nottingham and Loughborough, was passing near the village of Rempstone, he was extremely surprised at meeting what he thought was a funeral procession, marching in a most solemn and steady order in the centre of the road. The carrier, with a becoming propriety and decorum, drew his cart to the side of the road, that the mournful cavalcade might pass without any interruption. Very active inquiry was immediately afterwards made in the neighbourhood, ...
— Apparitions; or, The Mystery of Ghosts, Hobgoblins, and Haunted Houses Developed • Joseph Taylor
... than ever. Mr. Wheelwright was appointed to take charge of a church at Mount Wollaston, but his forced withdrawal from Boston was a source of irritation to his numerous friends. Mrs. Hutchinson remained and was the storm-centre, while Vane, who now sought a re-election, was freely accused of subterfuge ...
— England in America, 1580-1652 • Lyon Gardiner Tyler
... condition. It is found amongst nearly all the native tribes of America; the peoples of Malaysia, Melanesia, Australia, Micronesia, and Polynesia, the Dravidian tribes of India; in Africa it is found in the eastern Sahara, the Soudan, the east and west coast, and in the centre of the continent, but not to the exclusion, altogether, of father-right, while in the north the intrusion of Europeans and the followers of Islam has tended to suppress it. Traces of its former existence are discovered among certain of the ancient tribes ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... evident to all the family that some misunderstanding had arisen between Ethelberta and Mr. Julian. What Picotee hoped in the centre of her heart as to the issue of the affair it would be too complex a thing to say. If Christopher became cold towards her sister he would not come to the house; if he continued to come it would really be as Ethelberta's lover—altogether, ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... door leading into the hall where the main front entrance to the house and the stairs to the floor above are situated. On the right, to the rear, a door opening on to the dining room. Further forward, the kitchen range with scuttle, wood box, etc. In the centre of the room, a table with a red and white cloth. Four cane-bottomed chairs are pushed under the table. In front of the stove, two battered wicker rocking chairs. The floor is partly covered by linoleum strips. The walls are papered a light ...
— The Straw • Eugene O'Neill
... looked forward with anxiety has come. It is our duty to complete their work. If this Republic is not now made to stand on their great principles, it has no honest foundation, and the Father of all men will still shake it to its centre. If we have not yet been sufficiently scourged for our national sin to teach us to do justice to all God's creatures, without distinction of race or color, we must expect the still more heavy vengeance of an offended Father, still increasing his inflictions as he increased ...
— American Eloquence, Volume IV. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... of us, close by the gates of the South London College, a dense crowd blocked the thoroughfare. It was a curiously quiet crowd, but it swayed violently under some pressure in the centre, and broke as we watched, letting through a small body of police with half a dozen men ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Moses and Elias and Jesus. They 'were with Him' as witnessing to Him to whom law and ritual and prophecy had pointed, and they 'spake of His decease which He should accomplish at Jerusalem' as being the vital centre of all His work which the lambs slain according to ritual had foreshadowed, and the prophetic figure of the Servant of the Lord 'wounded for our transgressions and bruised for our iniquities' had ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... And so with human beings, there is a delicacy so pure, that vicious men in its presence become almost pure; all of purity which is in them is brought out; like attaches itself to like. The pure heart becomes a centre of attraction, round which similar atoms gather, and from which dissimilar ones are repelled. A corrupt heart elicits in an hour all that is bad in us; a spiritual one brings out and draws to itself all that is best and purest. Such was Christ. He stood in ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... he was receiving words of praise that set the hot blood mounting to his brow. Behind him stood his father, all around were the attendants of the royal family; and Paul, unaccustomed to be thus the centre of attention, almost wished the ground would open to hide him, although his heart could not but beat high ...
— In the Wars of the Roses - A Story for the Young • Evelyn Everett-Green
... Lucan was confronted with a somewhat similar problem to that which faced Shakespeare in his Julius Caesar. The problem that Shakespeare had to meet was how to prolong and sustain the interest of the play after the death of Caesar and the events that centre immediately round it. The difficulty was surmounted triumphantly. The obstacles in Lucan's path were greater. The poem is incomplete, and there must be some uncertainty as to its intended scope. That it was planned ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... the two chief motive powers which operate at the centre was, we conceive, completed by the addition of steam formed in the vacuum of the lungs, as available to give to the blood its due velocity. We also believe that complete proof a priori had been adduced of the fallacy of the theory that the primum mobile is in the heart; and, also, that proof ...
— Theory of Circulation by Respiration - Synopsis of its Principles and History • Emma Willard
... feet upon the building. The Smeaton now lay in Leith loaded, but, the wind and weather being so unfavourable for her getting down the Firth, she did not sail till this afternoon. It may be here proper to notice that the loading of the centre of the light-room floor, or last principal stone of the building, did not fail, when put on board, to excite an interest among those connected with the work. When the stone was laid upon the cart to be conveyed to Leith, the seamen fixed ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... In the centre of the room, emerging from a chunk of marble, the back and neck and one ear of an unclothed lady protruded; and the sculptured achievement was ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... the names of Devine and Priquet, were bribed to create a suspicion, by their informations against the Queen's female attendant. The first declared that on the 18th of August, while he was on duty near the cell of the King, he saw a woman about eleven o'clock in the day come from a room in the centre, holding in one hand three letters, and with the other cautiously opening the door of the right-hand chamber, whence she presently came back without the letters and returned into the centre chamber. He further ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... green touring-car spluttered on its noisy way again; but its tonneau contained no partie carree. A smartly clipped poodle perched in the centre of the wide seat—on one side of him lounged the shapeless green form of the pork-packer, on the other side gracefully reposed the ...
— High Noon - A New Sequel to 'Three Weeks' by Elinor Glyn • Anonymous
... incarnate in the lizard. Before going to battle the movements of a lizard in a bundle of spears was watched. If the lizard ran about the points of the spears and the outside of the bundle, it was a good omen; but if it rather worked its way into the centre for concealment, ...
— Samoa, A Hundred Years Ago And Long Before • George Turner
... Secretary advised the Student to take a ticket to the Centre of Africa—and the Student followed his advice. But the day before the boat started, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 16, 1892 • Various
... quite regularly declines. The numbers from Durham and Northumberland on the one hand, and from Devon and Somerset on the other are much larger than those from certain nearer counties, such as Stafford, Yorkshire, and Lancaster. The chief determinate of the force of attraction, distance from the centre, is in these cases qualified by two other considerations. In the case of Durham and Northumberland a large navigable seaboard affords greater facility and cheapness of transport, an important factor in the mobility ...
— Problems of Poverty • John A. Hobson
... such useful institutions must be attributed not to the undue severity of Christian morality, but to the ruin of the aqueducts by which fountains and baths were fed. However, even in the darkest period of the Middle Ages we find the traditional "kantharos," or basin, in the centre of the quadri-porticoes or courts by which the basilicas were entered. Such is the vase in the court of S. Caecilia, represented on the next page, and that in front of S. Cosimato in Trastevere; and such is the famous calix marmoreus, which formerly stood ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani
... was warm. It was the warmest place I ever was in Joshua Journals so voluminously begun Keg of these nails—of the true cross Lean and mean old age Man peculiarly and insufferably self-conceited: not seasick Marks the exact centre of the earth Nauseous adulation of princely patrons Never did succeed in making those idiots understand their own language Never left any chance for newspaper controversies Never uses a one-syllable word when he can think of a longer one No satisfaction in being a Pope in those days Not afraid of ...
— Quotations from the Works of Mark Twain • David Widger
... was for the following Monday at two o'clock. I found the theatre full of life and bustle. The principals, who had just finished their own rehearsal, were talking together in a group. We ladies and gentlemen of the chorus filled the centre of the stage. I noticed the lady I had heard referred to as Gertie; as also the thin lady with the golden hair. The massive gentleman and the fishy-eyed young man were again in close proximity; so long as I knew them they always were together, possessed, apparently, ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... the 11th March, however, that Gessi received a sufficient supply of ammunition to enable him to assume the offensive. Suleiman's camp or fort was a strongly barricaded enclosure, surrounded by a double row of trunks of trees. The centre of the enclosure was occupied by an inner fort, which was Suleiman's own residence. On Gessi attacking it, his first shell set fire to one of the huts, and as the wood was dry, the whole encampment was soon ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume II • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... as she was once the most religious, was in her fall the most corrupt, of European states; and as she was in her strength the centre of the pure currents of Christian architecture, so she is in her decline the source of the Renaissance. It was the originality and splendor of the palaces of Vicenza and Venice which gave this school its eminence in the eyes of Europe; and the ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... movement of the hand he placed the roll of papers in the very centre of the glowing fire. Mrs. Luttrell uttered a faint cry, and struggled to rise to her feet, but she had not the strength to do so. Besides, it was too late. With the poker, Dino held down the blazing mass, until nothing but a charred and blackened ruin remained. ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... of various colours, but they must be opaque: amongst them dull white chalk varieties, called "Catchokolo," are valuable, besides black and pink, named, respectively, "Bububu" and "Sekundereche" the "dregs of pombe." One red bead, of various sizes, which has a white centre, is always valuable in every part of Africa. It is called "Sami-sami" by the Suahele, "Chitakaraka" by the Waiyou, "Mangazi," "blood," by the Nyassa, and was found popular even amongst the Manyuema, under the name ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... tin pannicans (holding about a pint) served as tea-cups, and plates of the same metal in lieu of china; a teapot was dispensed with; but a portly substitute was there in the shape of an immense iron kettle, just taken from the fire and placed in the centre of our grand tea-service, which being new, a lively imagination might mistake for silver. Hot spirits, for those desirous of imbibing them, followed our substantial repast; but fatigue and the dreary weather had so completely damped all disposition to conviviality, ...
— A Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852-53. • Mrs. Charles (Ellen) Clacey
... however, that very praiseworthy efforts are being made to introduce better methods and more artistic designs in the many lace schools which are being formed in various parts of Devon. Mrs. Fowler, of Honiton, one of the oldest lace-makers in this centre, making exquisite lace, the technique leaving nothing to be desired, and also showing praiseworthy effort in shaking off the ...
— Chats on Old Lace and Needlework • Emily Leigh Lowes
... herself didn't measure at the time. She asked if that didn't perhaps prove on the contrary quite the opposite—that they were just THE cream and beyond all others. Wasn't there a kind of inner, very FAR in, circle, and wouldn't they be somewhere about the centre of that? George Flack almost quivered at this weird hit as from one of the blind, for he guessed on the spot that Delia Dosson had, as he ...
— The Reverberator • Henry James
... that inner flame; Enough is given to England and to fame. Remember, Sir, you in the centre stand; Europe's divided interests you command, All their designs uniting in your hand. Down from your throne descends the golden chain Which does the fabric of our world sustain, That once dissolved ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... Patricia floated to the centre of the porch and stood sunning herself in a stray shaft of light, like a very bird of paradise. The "tempestuous petticoat," sky-blue and laced with silver, swelled proudly outwards, the gleaming satin bodice slipped ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... first shock. This morning, my head crammed with passages from Latin authors, I leaned my brow against the pane of my window which looks on the garden. The garden is not mine, of course, since I live on the fourth floor; but I have a view of the big weeping-willow in the centre, the sanded path that runs around it, and the four walls lined with borders, one of which separates it from the huge premises of the Carmelites. It is an almost deserted garden. The first-floor tenant hardly ever walks there. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... much more strongly towards the earth than towards the hill, is only that the earth is larger than the hill. And at New South Wales, which is a point on our globe nearly opposite to England, plummets hang and fall towards the centre of the globe, exactly as they do here, so that they are hanging up and falling towards England, and the people there are standing with their feet towards us. Weight, therefore, is merely general attraction acting every where. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 269, August 18, 1827 • Various
... first they came with a few ships, and were content to attack a town or a monastery, they soon grew more daring and their forces larger. A number of them would now fortify themselves on some coast elevation and make it a centre for plundering raids into the surrounding country. At a later date many of them ceased to pose as pirates and took the role of invaders and conquerors, storming and taking cities and founding governments in the ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris
... pastor of the First Church of Raymond. Mr. Maxwell spoke of the fact that the dead woman had been fully prepared to go, but he spoke in a peculiarly sensitive manner of the effect of the liquor business on the lives of men and women like this one. Raymond, of course, being a railroad town and the centre of the great packing interests for this region, is full of saloons. I caught from the minister's remarks that he had only recently changed his views in regard to license. He certainly made a very striking address, and yet it was in no sense inappropriate ...
— In His Steps • Charles M. Sheldon
... that in the year 1887 the cricketers of Town Malling won eleven matches out of twelve; but during this year they have not been so successful. He directed us to the cricket-ground, which we visit, and find to be but a few minutes' walk from the centre of the town, bearing to the westward. It is a very fine field, nearly seven acres in extent, in splendid order, as level as a die, and as green as an emerald. It lies well open, and is flanked by the western range of hills of ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... the spokesman of his own generation, certainly of a great part of this generation also, when he informs us, that 'with Massinger terminated the triumph of dramatic poetry; indeed, the stage itself survived him but a short time. The nation was convulsed to its centre by contending factions, and a set of austere and gloomy fanatics, enemies to every elegant amusement and every social relaxation, rose upon the ruins of the State. Exasperated by the ridicule with which they had long been covered ...
— Plays and Puritans - from "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... mountain in Southern Kordofan to which nearly twenty years before he and the Mahdi had retreated after the flight from Abba Island. Here among old memories which his presence revived he became at once a centre of fanaticism. Night after night he slept upon the Mahdi's stone; and day after day tales of his dreams were carried by secret emissaries not only throughout the Western Soudan, but into the Ghezira and even to Khartoum. And now, his position being definite and his action highly dangerous, it ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... Sadie,'" she began smoothly, "'I thought I would write you to-day on some subject of general interest, and so I thought I would tell you about the subject of our court-house. It is a very fine building situated in the centre of the city, and a visit to the building after school hours well repays for the visit. Upon entrance we find upon our left the office of the county clerk and upon our right a number of windows affording a view of the street. And so we proceed, finding on both sides ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... was done, Cyril went round to the houses behind the yard, and he found that they stood in a small court, with three or four trees growing in the centre, and were evidently inhabited by respectable citizens. Over the door of one was painted, "Joshua Heddings, Attorney"; next to him was Gilbert Gushing, who dealt in jewels, silks, and other precious commodities from the East; next to him was a doctor, and beyond a dealer in spices. This ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty
... good deeds of the saint, and provided a place of prayer for those of the Moslem faith. In the palace of the Emperor was a magnificent audience hall, with marble columns and stone-carved galleries, in the centre of which stood the throne of gold sprinkled with rubies, emeralds, and diamonds, surrounded by a silver railing, and covered by a canopy of rich crimson brocade. In this audience hall the great and good Akbar was wont to receive not only his subjects, rich and poor, the former assembled ...
— Tales of Destiny • Edmund Mitchell
... had exhausted her first raptures at this glorious sight, Mrs Jarley ordered the room to be cleared of all but herself and the child, and, sitting herself down in an arm-chair in the centre, formally invested Nell with a willow wand, long used by herself for pointing out the characters, and was at great pains to instruct her ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... large flat rock, that gleamed out from among the surrounding grass and mosses, like a crusted snow bank, so white and crisp was the linen spread over it. Here a dainty repast presented itself, for the smoking dish of chowder that stood in the centre gave its name to what was, in fact, a sumptuous feast. Directly the noise of flying corks and the gurgle of amber-hued wines, with bursts of laughter and flashes of wit, frightened the birds from their haunt in the great maple-tree overhead, and made its rich yellow leaves tremble again in the ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... perfect equilibrium; but as they get towards the south, where the water is relatively warmer, their base, eaten away by running into other pieces, begins to melt, and be undermined; then comes a moment when the centre of gravity is displaced, and they turn upside down. Only, if this had happened two minutes later, it would have fallen on the brig and crushed us ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... enough, lying fast asleep there among the wilderness of green,—a frail and apparently very poor old man, adrift and homeless, without a friend in the world. The sun sank, and a crimson after-glow spread across the horizon from west to east, the rich colours flung up from the centre of the golden orb merging by slow degrees into that pure pearl-grey which marks the long and lovely summer twilight of English skies. The air was very still, not so much as the rumble of a distant cart wheel disturbing the silence. Presently, however, the slow shuffle of hesitating ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... we were about. Or was it we who had passed on to them the fighting spirit that fired us? I felt behind me the thrill that ran through my men. The first rank could not manage to keep the correct distance, the yard and a half, which ought to separate it from its leader. Even the corporal in the centre allowed his horse to graze the haunches of mine, "Tourne-Toujours," my gallant charger, the fiery thoroughbred which had so often maddened me at the riding schools of the regiment and at manoeuvres, by his savageness ...
— In the Field (1914-1915) - The Impressions of an Officer of Light Cavalry • Marcel Dupont
... the remaining jet flared suddenly. By its harder glare the wooden room looked harder too, and disenchanting. The figures of its occupants began filing through the door. The little man was left in the centre of the room, his deep eyes smouldering upon the backs of the retreating members, his thumb and finger raised to the ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... seat upon a mat, in the centre of the enclosure. Then the chiefs, and the veteran warriors, who in many a bloody foray had won renown, took their seats around him. Silently and with the dignity becoming great men, they assumed their positions. The young men, who had not yet signalized themselves, and who were ever eager ...
— The Adventures of the Chevalier De La Salle and His Companions, in Their Explorations of the Prairies, Forests, Lakes, and Rivers, of the New World, and Their Interviews with the Savage Tribes, Two Hu • John S. C. Abbott
... really hopeless, and even the boldest and the most persevering scarcely knew which way to turn, to be useful. A failure of water, the numerous points that required resistance, the conflagration extending in all directions from a common centre, by means of numberless irregular and narrow streets, and the impossibility of withstanding the intense heat, in the choked passages, soon added despair to the ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... a few minutes later he was following her rustling skirts up the broad centre aisle to the pew four rows back from the pulpit. He wished it had not been so far forward, because the worshippers interested him, if only by reason of their sameness of type. You could see they were all people of position, ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... Son with his easy drawl, "I'm coming to the centre with my ante, just for the sake of seeing the cards turned. Deal 'em out, amigo; state your case once more, so we can take a good, square ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... the Forbidden City, which is in the centre of Peking, and in which stands the Imperial palace. There he received his instructions from ...
— A Chinese Wonder Book • Norman Hinsdale Pitman
... followed with the paddles, pole, and hydroscope. When the raft had been pumped up and was afloat, we carried the reel of gossamer piano-wire aboard, followed it, pushed off, and paddled quietly through the level cobwebs of mist toward the centre of the lake. From the shore I heard a gruesome noise. It originated under one of the row of tents of the heavy artillery. Medusa, snoring, was an awesome sound in that wilderness and solitude ...
— Police!!! • Robert W. Chambers
... question. 'The Tods' were hand in glove with all the cottagers. She, Clara, had nothing to say against any one who sympathized with the condition of the agricultural laborer; quite the contrary. Becket was almost, as Felix knew—though perhaps it wasn't for her to say so—the centre of that movement; but there were ways of doing things, and one did so deprecate women like this Kirsteen—what an impossibly Celtic name!—putting her finger into any pie that really was of national importance. Nothing could come ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... that we in the audience are carried away sometimes by that ringing voice, those gleaming eyes. He has us, this Hero, in the hollow of his hand (to borrow a phrase from the Villain). When the limelight is playing round his brow, and he stands in the centre of the stage with clenched fists, oh! then he has us. "What! Betray my aged mother for filthy gold!" he cries, looking at us scornfully as if it was our suggestion. "Never, while yet breath remains in my body!" What a cheer we give him then; a cheer which seems to imply ...
— If I May • A. A. Milne
... to attack the enemy in flank. The Irish, instead of waiting the assault, faced about, and retreated toward Duleck with some precipitation; yet not so fast but that Schomberg fell in among their rear, and did considerable execution. King James, however, soon reenforced his left wing from the centre; and the Count was in his turn obliged to send ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... day on which the first locomotive, decked out with flags, branches, ribbons, and flowers, pulled a whole trainful of jubilation from Marburg to Klagenfurt. Thirty young girls from the Styrian wine-centre were on the train in their festal finery, going to dance with the lads of Klagenfurt. All sang and shouted for joy because the new time had come, ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... cheering halloos of the olden hunting-field, to which the impatient yelling of the hounds, now close of the object of their pursuit, gave a lively and unremitting chorus. The straggling riders began now to rally towards the scene of action, collecting from different points as to a common centre. ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... basis and submitted on 3rd June, 1899. It was contended in this memorandum that the lack of any railway between Fourteen Streams and the Transvaal capital eliminated that route from consideration, and that the choice now lay between the line running up through the centre of the Free State and the ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice
... more for the Spaniards in Flanders you would be content to lose them all!" No wonder, after this, that you were able to combine all Europe in a league against the power of France; that you were the centre of union, and the directing soul of that wise, that generous confederacy formed by your labours; that you could steadily support and keep it together, in spite of repeated misfortunes; that even after defeats you were as formidable ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... I knew just exactly where it was. It was under the east span of the bridge and just underneath about the fifth or sixth plank from the centre. I knew it was hard bottom down there, too. So Captain Savage and the other man he had gave me a thin rope and we fastened one end on the deck. I tied the other end of it around my waist in a loose French ...
— Roy Blakeley • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... Santa Croce, rises in the centre of the island, and two principal ranges of mountains runs in the direction of its length, keeping closer to the north than to the south coast. The highest summit of the range of Santa Croce is mount Troodos, with an elevation of 6590 feet above the sea-level. Here, on ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, v5 - Central and Southern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... which, however, would not fetch five piastres a yard in the bazaar of Stamboul, curious water-colors said to represent "impressions," though one would be shy of meeting, beyond the bounds of an insane asylum, the individual whose impressions could take so questionable a shape; lastly, the centre of the collection, a "polka mazurka harmony in yellow," by Sardanapalus Stiggins, the great impressionist painter of the day. Chrysophrasia paid five hundred pounds for this ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... horrible, and that this was her sole motive for hiding it. It was the face of a corpse; it was the head of a skeleton; it was a monstrous visage, with snaky locks, like Medusa's, and one great red eye in the centre of the forehead. Again, it was affirmed that there was no single and unchangeable set of features beneath the veil; but that whosoever should be bold enough to lift it would behold the features of that person, ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... movements of the right side had not impaired the mental power. The most noticeable change which had come over Mr. Motley since I first knew him was due to the death of Mrs. Motley in December, 1874. It had in fact not only profoundly depressed him, but, if I may so express it, had removed the centre of his thought to a new world. In long conversations with me of a speculative kind, after that painful event, it was plain how much his point of view of the whole course and relation of things had changed. His mind was the last to dogmatize on any ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... attach no meaning to those words. I refuse to make a hierarchy of human actions and ascribe worthiness to some and ill-repute to others. The terms vice and virtue have no signification for me. I do not confer praise or blame: I accept. I am the measure of all things. I am the centre ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... think, however, of the trunk as, at the best, anything more than a by-product of the coconut tree, whose head is more than its body. Even while it lives its head is shorn once a year, for, as fresh fronds push out and upward from the centre, those of the outer circle get old and must be cut away. And when one of those feathery, fern-like fronds, toying with the breeze, comes crashing to the ground, it is ten or twelve feet long, and consists of a great backbone, as ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... humanity not as an aggregate, but as a collection of units. Most thinkers write and speak of man; Browning of men. With man as a species, with man as a society, he does not concern himself, but with individual man and man. Every man is for him an epitome of the universe, a centre of creation. Life exists for each as completely and separately as if he were the only inhabitant of our planet. In the religious sense this is the familiar Christian view; but Browning, while accepting, does not confine himself to, the religious sense. He conceives ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... Jasper scarcely ever addressed himself to Matilda; not twenty spoken words could have passed between them; yet, in the very third interview, Matilda's sly fingers had closed on a sly note. And from that day, in each interview, Arabella walking in the centre, Jasper on one side, Matilda the other—behind Arabella's back-passed the sly fingers and the sly notes, which Matilda received and answered. Not more than twelve or fourteen times was even this interchange effected. Darrell was about to move to Fawley. All such meetings ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... his speech would depend the political future of the speaker. Therefore, on that day, the legislators were in their places, and the Chamber did not resemble, as usual, a class of noisy boys presided over by a master without authority. The lunch-counter was deserted, and the deputies of the Centre themselves were not absorbed in their ...
— Ten Tales • Francois Coppee
... the residence of the commanding officer, and of his senior subordinate, who, with their families and domestics, tenanted the whole of that range of buildings, with the exception of one large room in the centre, generally used as a hall of council with the Indians. In the other range, precisely similar in construction, were quartered Ensign Ronayne and the surgeon Von Vottenberg, who each, however occupied but one apartment. The central and largest serving as their mess-room. The other half ...
— Hardscrabble - The Fall of Chicago: A Tale of Indian Warfare • John Richardson
... far-reaching isles. Its line has gone out through all the earth. The descendants of New England are drawing riches from the prairies, the mines of the mountains, and are creating business thrift in all the rising towns. In all the world, in every commercial centre, in the vessels upon the sea, in every mechanical industry at home and abroad, are those whose keenness and brightness of mind, whose sharpness of ingenuity, and whose warmth of heart are to be traced to the natural blood and descent ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, January 1886 - Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 1, January, 1886 • Various
... commanded the various hills that crowned the ridge. All along the ridge the rock cropped out, bare and bleak, but broken in rough natural castellation. The form of the ridge was a segment of a circle, with the higher points inland to the west. In the centre rose the Castle, on the highest point of all. Between the various rocky excrescences were groups of trees of various sizes and heights, amongst some of which were what, in the early morning light, looked like ruins. These—whatever they were—were of massive grey stone, probably limestone ...
— The Lair of the White Worm • Bram Stoker
... large town could be seen looming against the evening sky in the far distance. The sailor entered the underwood with the air of a man who had aimed at the spot as a goal, and who meant to rest there a while. He reached an open space, in the centre of which grew a stunted tree. Here he sat down, and taking off his wallet, ate a hearty supper of scraps of excellent bread, cheese, and meat, which he washed down with a draught of gin. Afterwards he lit his pipe, and, while ...
— Shifting Winds - A Tough Yarn • R.M. Ballantyne
... (1456); capital of Kwanto; Franciscan mission; Hidetada; Bakufu; castle; nobles must reside in; rebuilt after fire; art centre; vendetta forbidden; tree planting in; Kwanno Chokuyo's school; fires; degeneration, 18th century; vagabonds; prison; land offered to foreign traders; ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... silently to lap the base of the rocks and the trees are in black shadow, massed in the centre. It looks very mysterious and still. There is a stone gateway touched with the light of a dying day. It is sunset and the dead is being brought to its resting place in a tiny boat, all the smaller for its relation ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon
... been observed several times in Europe. It is as follows: When the time arrives for the making of the nest the enclosure is supplied with sticks, leaves and detritus of various kinds. The male then, with his tail to the centre of the enclosure, commences with his powerful feet to throw up a mound of the materials furnished. To do this he walks around in a series of concentric circles. When the mound is about four feet high the female adds a few artistic touches by way of smoothing down, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... from the Danube, a tall, gaunt Prussian officer, a sketching English artist, two University students, and some cloth-merchants, returning from Frankfort fair, were busily occupied at a long table in the centre of the room, at an ample banquet, in which sour-crout, cherry-soup, and savoury sausages were not wanting. So keen were the appetites of these worthies, that the entrance of the new comers, who seated themselves at a small table in the corner ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... about the spider," he went on, trying to push all thoughts of the dead squirrel from his mind. Let me tell you about this spider. In the corner of a fence Neddy saw a large circular spider's web, shaped like a funnel, down in the centre of which was a hole. As he stood looking at the delicate thing, finer than any woven silk, a fly struck against it and got his feet tangled, so that he could not escape. Instantly a great black spider ran out of the hole at ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... for the cow-boy camp below the cliff. Half a dozen men lounged round a smudge fire. The old man paused to sort out the scene; the box of a gramaphone laid out for a card table, a bottle of whiskey in the centre, two empty bottles with candles stuck in the necks for lights, a dull smudge fire, four rough fellows sprawling on the ground, one with corduroy velveteen trousers, an old white pack horse nosing windward of the smoke; one figure with sheepskin chaps to his waist, thumbs in his belt, standing ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... most of you have seen a Primrose before to-day. Each pale yellow blossom is made up of five petals, which are joined together forming a tube or corolla. The petals are notched or indented on the outer edge. At the centre of the blossom, where the petals meet, each petal is marked with a spot of darker yellow. Each flower grows alone on a long slender stem. At the top of the stem is a kind of green tube out of which the yellow blossom appears. The Primrose ...
— Wildflowers of the Farm • Arthur Owens Cooke
... even and close as possible. If these two operations be well conducted there will not be found a single crack in the whole floor from end to end, which is of great importance to secure the making of good malt. Each loft should have uprights under the centre of all the beams from end to end of the house; this precaution is necessary to prevent the swagging or cracking of the upper floor. Trap doors should be placed at proper distances in the upper malt-house floor, to facilitate the ...
— The American Practical Brewer and Tanner • Joseph Coppinger
... It would be the old fellow, the warm-hearted old man himself come to fetch her! She entered the big ugly room, with its dingy wall-paper and threadbare carpet, its oleographs in tarnished frames, its ancient centre ottoman, its elderly piano and unsafe, uncertain chairs. How she hated this room, where of evenings the 'paying guests' ...
— The Imaginary Marriage • Henry St. John Cooper
... twilight I was making my way through a teakwood forest, when I came upon a deep circular depression in an open space, in the centre of which was a rude stone temple. I was sure that this was one of the temples of the Thugs, so I concealed myself in the undergrowth ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... substance which appears to pervade all space, and to which the name of Ether has been given. Some of these particles carry a positive charge of electricity and some a negative, and the chemical atom is formed by the grouping of a certain number of negatively charged particles round a centre composed of positive electricity around which they revolve; and it is the number of these particles and the rate of their motion that determines the nature of the atom, whether, for instance, it will be an atom of iron or an atom of hydrogen, and thus we are brought back ...
— The Law and the Word • Thomas Troward
... She plumes her feathers, and lets grow her wings, That, in the various bustle of resort, Were all to-ruffled, and sometimes impaired. He that has light within his own clear breast May sit i' the centre, and enjoy bright day: But he that hides a dark soul and foul thoughts Benighted walks under the mid-day sun; Himself is his own dungeon. SEC. BRO. 'Tis most true That musing meditation most affects The pensive secrecy of desert cell, ...
— L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus, and Lycidas • John Milton
... intervals and covering a front of about 600 yards, the centre being directed on to a conical hill at the back of the enemy's camp. The reserve followed in column of companies, in single rank, at fifty paces distance between companies. The enemy's guns opened on the Regiment at once with shrapnel, but most of the ...
— The Record of a Regiment of the Line • M. Jacson
... spent in the uncertain tactics of this half barbaric warfare, he was removed, in the height of political strife in Kansas, to its very centre. Here, while comparatively free from the wearisome requirements of active service such as had been demanded in California, and at a time when events the most portentous proved clearly to the great minds of the country the advance of ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... comprehension. For that reason we shall welcome the day when an official announcement is made that the British Government have taken over the country. One would like to see big "indabas" held at every town and centre in the country, formal raising of the Union Jack, cannon salutes, bands playing ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey
... over the left iliac crest, in the centre of which, a spot as large as the thumb nail, looks gangrenous. The inflammation extends over a surface as large as the two hands. Some bullae or blebs have formed in the vicinity of the gangrenous spot. Ordered a large flaxseed ...
— Report on Surgery to the Santa Clara County Medical Society • Joseph Bradford Cox
... she was graciously received by the great lady who stood in the centre of a group at the back of the drawing-room—a lofty apartment in white and gold, the panels painted by Baudry, the furniture purest Empire. She noted the height and majestic bearing of this cousin of kings, noted the aquiline nose drooped over a contracted mouth—which could assume ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... has thus been said of the purity of the air of the nursery generally, is applicable to that of all sleeping rooms. It is an important point gained, when we can secure a nursery with folding doors in the centre, so as, when we please, to make two rooms of it. In that case, the division in which the bed is, can be completely ventilated a little before night, and thus be comparatively pure for the reception of both the mother and ...
— The Young Mother - Management of Children in Regard to Health • William A. Alcott
... it," exclaimed Fanny, with radiant eyes, "and I assure you no other house in Vienna shall equal ours. We will make it a centre of the best society, and in the midst of this circle which is to embrace the most eminent representatives of beauty, intellect, and distinction, we will forget that we are united ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... of the king led him to the centre of Somersetshire. Here, at the confluence of the Tone and the Parret, was a small island, afterwards known as Ethelingay, or Prince's Island. Around it spread a wide morass, little likely to be crossed by his pursuers. Here, ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... the battalia, or centre, under command of that famous fighter, George Everard Solms, consisting of Germans, Swiss, French, and Walloons. The "New Beggars," as the Walloons were called, who had so recently surrendered the forts of Crevecoeur ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... your shop a fashionable shopping centre I can't imagine," said the artist, with a very genuine shudder; "if I were trying to decide between the merits of Carlsbad plums and confected figs as a winter dessert it would infuriate me to have ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki |
