"Configuration" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... defence was so short that it could be strongly fortified, and held against large numbers by a comparatively small force. Nature, indeed, cannot relieve men of their duty to be wise and brave, but, in the marvellous configuration of land and sea about Constantinople, nature has done her utmost to enable human skill and courage to establish there the splendid and stable throne of a ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 2 - "Constantine Pavlovich" to "Convention" • Various
... ** This physical configuration of the country explains the existence at a very early date of those gigantic serpents which ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... Peggy in my eye for you; by the same token, as the night's could, warm your tooth, avick; there's waker wather nor this in Lough Mecall. Sorra sup of it over I keep for my own use at all, barrin' when I take a touch o' configuration in my bowels, or, may be, when I'm too long at my prayers; for, God help me, sure I'm but sthrivin', wid the help o' one thing an' another, to work out my salvation as well as I can! Your health, any how, ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... too, to detect in the configuration of the district a certain identity with our own county of Essex, in England, where a cousin of Bill's had a cottage, and where, some day, we were to have a cottage too. Our home is called Wigboro' House, after the cousin's, and we have settled ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... resemblances. But the differences are of much greater weight. The pear-shaped heads of most of the Central American figures, whose peculiar configuration is only approached by the wildest caricatures of Louis Philippe, are perfectly distinctive. So are the hieroglyphics arranged in squares, found on the sculptures of Central America and in the Dresden Codex. So is the general character of the architecture ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... alongside, the captain of her, my friend Obediah, as I had no difficulty in guessing, from his very out of the way configuration, dark as it was, called out, "I says, Paul, who have you ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... voice. But properly a voice [Greek omitted] is an articulate sound, which illustrates [Greek omitted] the understanding of man. Epicurus says that it is an efflux emitted from things that are vocal, or that give sounds or great noises; this is broken into those fragments which are after the same configuration. Like figures are round figures with round, and irregular and triangular with those of the same kind. These falling upon the ears produce the sense of hearing. This is seen in leaking vessels, and in fullers when they fan ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... of tidal evolution in a fresh light. If the moon now departed to any considerable extent from showing the constant face to the earth, it would seem that its retreat could not have been caused by tides. Some other agent for producing the present configuration would be necessary, just as we found that some other agent than the tides has been necessary in ...
— Time and Tide - A Romance of the Moon • Robert S. (Robert Stawell) Ball
... to entertain suppositions, possibilities regarding the nature, form, configuration of concrete immutable matter like the earth, arises from the fact, that a man who commits himself to theories about such an untheoretical subject as Central Africa is deterred from bestirring himself to prove them by the test of exploration. His opinion ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... her resolution to go to Reims and take the King to his anointing.[1315] She did not stay to consider whether it would be better to wage war in Champagne than in Normandy. She did not know enough of the configuration of the country to decide such a question, and it is not likely that her saints and angels knew more of geography than she did. She was in haste to take the King to Reims for his anointing, because she believed it impossible for him to be king until he had been anointed.[1316] The idea of ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... air of loneliness about this spot," he remarked, "that in itself suggests crime. If this were an ordinary murder, one could well imagine the assassin was aided in his diabolical work by the configuration of the land which, shelving as it does, slips down into the narrow valley, so as to preclude any possibility of escape on the part of the victim. The place seems especially designed by Providence as a death-trap. Let us have a look at the ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... the famous people of the Victorian era. True to my plan of asking questions, I asked him whether he had ever seen Cardinal Newman. He replied by a story which was revealing as to a certain fierceness in Newman's character and mental configuration. In any case, it had both rhetorically and intellectually a considerable ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... of fancy. It was perhaps easier at the end of the sixteenth century than it is now, to admit the possibility of a practical path to China and India across the pole; for delusions as to climate and geographical configuration then prevalent have long since been dispelled. While, therefore, at least as much heroism was required then as now to launch into those unknown seas, in hope to solve the dread mystery of the North; there was even a ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... contrasted with the large monarchies of Asia, appears more marked among the ancient Greeks than elsewhere; and there cannot be any doubt that they owe it, in a considerable degree, to the multitude of insulating boundaries which the configuration ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... high [above the sea] sharp as a pyramid, and with perpendicular precipices of thousands of feet on every hand, to be a representative of the older chalk formation; and what a difficulty to conceive the nature of a convulsion (even with unlimited power), which could produce a configuration like the Mont Cervin rising from the glacier ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... and twice Raraka headed us again—again, in the sea fashion, the quite innocent steersman was abused—and again the Casco kept away. Had I been called on, with no more light than that of our experience, to draw the configuration of that island, I should have shown a series of bow- window promontories, each overlapping the other to the nor'ard, and the trend of the land from the south-east to the north-west, and behold, on the chart it lay near east and ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the twenty-fourth, in line-ahead (that is, one after another) because Farragut found the opening narrower than he thought it should be for two columns abreast, at night, under fire, and against the spring current. Owing to the configuration of the channel the starboard column had to weigh first, which gave the lead to the 500-ton gunboat Cayuga. This was the one weak point, because the leading vessel, drawing most fire, should have been the strongest. The fault was Farragut's; for his heart got the better of his ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood
... "enough of this for the moment; tonight, perhaps, some more, but while we are here amongst all this lordly litter, I can think of nothing else." Again I bid her turn the pages, noting as she did so how each chapter was headed by the coloured configuration of a world. Page by page we turned of crackling parchment, until by chance, at the top of one, my eye caught a coloured round I could not fail to recognise—'twas the spinning button on the blue breast of the immeasurable that yesterday I inhabited. "Read here," I cried, clapping my finger upon ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... off again I had slackened my pace down to a stealthy cat-like tread that took me along with an incredible absence of noise. As I moved forward I began to turn the configuration of the place over in my mind and wonder to what practical use I could put the fine natural cover of the bushes. As I could see none I put the matter out of my head and devoted all my energies to coming to immediate grips with the men ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh
... fittings were not remarkable. By the configuration of the ship I guessed that two of the staterooms must be rather large. I could make out ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... the configuration of the country as on a map; the high Jebel Orbata, 1170 metres, now covered with snow, coming forward to meet you on the other side of the wide valley. From this point it is easy to realize, as did the commander of that French expedition, the significance ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... subject, he says: "It is a fascinating guess that the electrons constitute the fundamental substratum of which all matter is composed. That a grouping of say 700 electrons, 350 positive and 350 negative, interleaved or interlocked in a state of violent motion so as to produce a stable configuration under the influence of their centrifugal inertia and their electric forces, constitutes an atom of hydrogen. That sixteen times as many, in another stable grouping, constitute an atom of oxygen. That some 16,000 of them go to form an atom of sodium; about ...
— Aether and Gravitation • William George Hooper
... great deep, which defies arithmetical computation, and can be expressed only by their sacred numerals. The people have a more certain faith in them than in most of their divinities, because they see them so often; every cloud with a curious configuration or serpentine tail is a dragon. "We see him," they say. The scattering of the cloud is his disappearance. He rules the hills, is connected with feng-shui (geomancy), dwells round the graves, is associated with the Confucian ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... been expected; and hence arose the at one time powerful and generally-accepted doctrine of "Catastrophism." That the succession of phenomena upon the globe, whereby the earth's crust had assumed the configuration and composition which we find it to possess, had been a discontinuous and broken succession, was the almost inevitable conclusion of the older geologists. Everywhere in their study of the rocks they met with apparently impassable gaps, and breaches of continuity that could not be bridged over. Everywhere ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... my father, that very brave and kindly gentleman from whom I got what daring I ever had, I suppose. He was a clean-cut man, five-eleven in his stockings, and few men in all that country had a handsomer body. His shoulders sloped—an excellent configuration for strength—as a study of no less a man than George Washington will prove—his arms were round, his skin white as milk, his hair, like my own, a sandy red, and his eyes blue and very quiet. There ...
— The Way of a Man • Emerson Hough
... with an accidental, peculiar beauty," said Hardy. "The configuration of the land is adapted to form a shelter to the beech trees, while the little lake is just in the right place to produce a pretty effect. The landscape is, as you say, a Jutland landscape; the grass in the meadows is coarse, and the ...
— A Danish Parsonage • John Fulford Vicary
... instincts and consciousness dwell in the "sensory ganglia," that "an idea is a contradiction, a motion, a configuration of the intermediate organ of sense," that "memory is the organic registration of their effects of impressions," and that the "cerebrum" is the seat of ideas, the home of thought and reason. But when "grey-matter" that composes this thinking mechanism ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... more, as we rush to meet the course of the Potomac, the broad ledges that heave the bed of the river into mounds, and the ascending configuration of the shore, seem to speak of something grand, and directly we are in the cradle of romance, at ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... pilot himself—in this event the operation is rendered additionally trying, as he also has to attend to his machine must keep his eyes glued to the ground beneath and at the same time be able to read the configuration of the panorama revealed to him. He must also keep in touch with his map and compass, so as to be positive of his position and direction. He must be a first-class judge of distances ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot
... sail again, piloted by a fishing boat. Under its guidance the Seafowl lay off the shores of what seemed through the glasses to be an earthly paradise, a perfect scene of verdant beauty, with waving trees and cultivated fields, sheltered by a central mountain the configuration of which suggested that it must at one time have been a volcano, one side of which had been blown away so that a gigantic crater many miles across formed a lake-like harbour. Into this deep water, after careful soundings had been taken, the ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... our original base," he said, giving them absolution with faint damns, "but it will entail a great deal of extra labor. A hundred and nine miles is a great distance to carry equipment, and, actually, the distance is a great deal more, considering the configuration of ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett
... more helpful is Physical Geography, which surveys the earth in its three great divisions,—land, sea, and air,—without reference to lines of political demarkation. The configuration of the different portions of the globe, with the varieties of climate, the relations of mountain and plain, of land and water, have strongly affected the character of nations and the currents of history. In regions extremely ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... much helped by the superior power of observation obtained by his artillery owing to the configuration of the ground all along the south bank, and this, in fact, was most helpful to the British Army throughout ...
— 1914 • John French, Viscount of Ypres
... was satisfactorily ascertained that the main force of the explosion had been exerted within a perimeter of about one thousand yards; that various hot springs had suddenly gushed out,—the temperature of the least warm being about 37 Raumur (116 F.);—that there was no change in the configuration of the mountain;—and that the terrific sounds had been produced only by the violent outrush of vapor and ashes from some of the rents. In hope of allaying the general alarm, a creole priest climbed the summit of the volcano, and there planted the great cross which gives the ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... you get an insight into the configuration of the whole Western Highlands. By the dip of the mountains, you discover at a glance all the openings in the panorama around you into other regions. Follow your fancies fearlessly wherever they may lead; and if the blue aerial haze that hangs over a pass winding eastward, tempt you from ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... aperture of five inches, a power of thirty diameters, and a field of view of seventy-eight minutes of arc. Two diagrams were usually drawn in the book for each of these objects, the one showing the relation of adjacent objects in the great telescope, and the other the configuration of the more conspicuous objects in the field of view of the finder. Adjacent to these "finder" diagrams are the settings—to the nearest minute of arc in declination, and of time in right ascension—as read from the large finding-circles, divided in black and white. The field ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 530, February 27, 1886 • Various
... erectile; nymphae thickened and enlarged; vulvar orifice patent, for she had in early youth been a prostitute; the voice was almost contralto. Her partner was of low type, but eminently feminine in configuration and manner. In this case I heard that 'the man' went to a local ascetic and begged his intercession with the deity, so that she might impregnate her partner. ('The Hindoo medical works mention the ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... design would consequently always apply, whatever were the product's character. The recent Mont-Pelee eruption, for example, required all previous history to produce that exact combination of ruined houses, human and animal corpses, sunken ships, volcanic ashes, etc., in just that one hideous configuration of positions. France had to be a nation and colonize Martinique. Our country had to exist and send our ships there. IF God aimed at just that result, the means by which the centuries bent their influences towards it, showed exquisite ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... cellulose, proportionately affects the structural properties of the derived compounds, both sulphocarbonates and esters. This is at least an indication that the properties of the visible aggregates are directly related to the actual configuration of the chemical units. But it appears that we are barred from the present discussion of such a problem in absence of any theory of the solid state generally, but more particularly of those forms of matter which ...
— Researches on Cellulose - 1895-1900 • C. F. Cross
... surface rimmed with mountains which enclose but fail to divide, and its monotonous configuration have produced a racial and cultural uniformity as striking as Europe's heterogeneity. Constant movements and commixture, migration and conquest, have been the history of the black races, varied by victorious incursions of the Hamitic and Semitic ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... shrivelled creature seemed to have taken possession of it. He raised his head, and peered about him. He and three soldiers—youngsters, like himself, who had never before been under fire—appeared to be utterly alone in that hell. They were the end men of the regiment, and the configuration of the ground completely hid ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... without curiosity to see how Teufelsdrockh in this for him unexampled predicament, demeans himself; with what specialties of successive configuration, splendor and color, his Firework blazes off. Small, as usual, is the satisfaction that such can meet with here. From amid these confused masses of Eulogy and Elegy, with their mad Petrarchan and Werterean ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... that strikes me very much in the configuration of the structure in the centre is those places marked X, fig. 20, around which I have discovered the presence of soft wood piles 5 inches in diameter driven into the ground, and bounding the raised stone arrangement; the stones in these rude circular pavements or cairns are laid slightly ...
— The Clyde Mystery - a Study in Forgeries and Folklore • Andrew Lang
... look for water; particularly as our bullock showed evident symptoms of becoming knocked up. I therefore followed the fall of the country to the north-east; and, in a short time, came to the sea-side. We compared our little map of the harbour of Port Essington with the configuration of the bay before us, but nothing would agree exactly, although it bore a general resemblance ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... the land forces. Goderich, Sarnia and Windsor will be simultaneously occupied; all the available rolling stock seized, and the main line of the Grand Trunk cut at Grand River, to prevent the passage of cars and locomotives to Hamilton. The geographical configuration of the western half of Upper Canada will permit of a few thousand men holding the entire section of the country between Cobourg and the Georgian Bay. These are connected by a chain of lakes and water ...
— Troublous Times in Canada - A History of the Fenian Raids of 1866 and 1870 • John A. Macdonald
... halts at different ports, and around the eastern end of the island to the destination. It is now an all-rail run of twenty-four hours. The project for a "spinal railway" from one end of the island to the other had been under consideration for many years. The configuration lent itself excellently to such a system, and not at all well to any other. A railway map of such a system shows a line, generally, through the middle of the island along its length, with numerous branch lines running north and south to the various cities and ports on the ...
— Cuba, Old and New • Albert Gardner Robinson
... stretch of wall following the shore line, which could have given shelter for any one to stalk me practically from the start. At another I noticed a farm close by, and from this an assailant could easily have slipped down to the beach and run back again. At a third the configuration of the rocks was such that it would have been simple for him to have waited below the bank till he heard us coming, made a noise to bring me down, and then gone up above without exposing himself against the sky. In fact one could draw no ...
— The Man From the Clouds • J. Storer Clouston
... If the configuration of the theatre of operations be favorable to a movement against the extremity of the enemy's line of defence, this direction maybe best calculated to lead to important results. ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... been called in science the present period,—the modern times of the geologist,—that period to which man himself belongs, and since the beginning of which, though its duration be counted by hundreds of thousands of years, there has been no alteration in the general configuration of the earth, consequently no important modification of its climatic conditions, and no change in the animals and plants ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... M. d'Orbec went on horseback, and Madame d'Auffray and M. Livret were driven. The portrait of Diane of Dianet was praised for the beauty of the dame, a soft-fleshed acutely featured person, a fresh-of-the-toilette face, of the configuration of head of the cat, relieved by a delicately aquiline nose; and it could only be the cat of fairy metamorphosis which should stand for that illustration: brows and chin made an acceptable triangle, and ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... denying that it looks as though Providence had just planned the configuration of the country to suit ...
— Pillars of Society • Henrik Ibsen
... Ricca is a sporadic one, such as may crop up anywhere and at any time. It is like that of Musolino—the case of an isolated outlaw, who finds the perplexed geographical configuration of the country convenient for offensive and defensive purposes. Calabrian brigandage, as a whole, has always worn ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... because it has an independent power of self-motion—that is, it has self-activity and self-determination. No arrangement of matter, no configuration of body, can be conceived as the originator of ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... actually SEE an angle, and contemplate the complete circumference of a Circle in the happy region of the Three Dimensions—how shall I make it clear to you the extreme difficulty which we in Flatland experience in recognizing one another's configuration? ...
— Flatland • Edwin A. Abbott
... bound conceptions of taste and beauty, as of art, dress, religion, and human relations generally, in shackles which do not exist in these days of individualism and broad horizons. To-day we see the Grand Canyon with profound astonishment but without prejudice. Its amazing size, its bewildering configuration, its unprecedented combinations of color affect the freed and elated consciousness of our times as another and perhaps an ultimate revelation in nature of law, order, ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard
... them with the coast, I have no doubt are the bottoms of ancient inlets and deep bays, such as at the present day intersect every part of Tierra del Fuego and the western coast. Chile must formerly have resembled the latter country in the configuration of its land and water. The resemblance was occasionally shown strikingly when a level fog-bank covered, as with a mantle, all the lower parts of the country: the white vapour curling into the ravines, beautifully represented little coves and bays; and here and there a solitary hillock ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... a plan of the cavern showing its internal configuration, the situation of the lagoon, the lay of the Beehive, Ker Karraje's habitation, my cell, ...
— Facing the Flag • Jules Verne
... down at where, with its four legs outstretched and its tail waving softly, an alligator swam by some five feet below the surface. It was only a small one, between three and four feet in length, but showing all the ugly configuration of its kind; and it fascinated Rob as he gazed at it till it slowly grew more shadowy and shortened in length ...
— Rob Harlow's Adventures - A Story of the Grand Chaco • George Manville Fenn
... Portland was at this period singularly sharp and rugged. Nothing remains at this date of its past configuration. Since the idea of manufacturing Portland stone into Roman cement was first seized, the whole rock has been subjected to an alteration which has completely changed its original appearance. Calcareous ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... various meanings in the writers of metaphysic: it is here used simply for those notions of external things, which our organs of sense bring us acquainted with originally; and is defined a contraction, or motion, or configuration, of the fibres, which constitute the immediate organ of sense; which will be explained at large in another part of the work. Synonymous with the word idea, we shall sometimes use the words sensual motion in contradistinction ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... pariah kite (Milvus govinda) is found on the Nilgiris. This useful bird usually sails in graceful circles high overhead, looking for food. Its cry is not heard so frequently on those hills as in the Himalayas, the reason being the different configuration of the two ranges. The Nilgiris are undulating and downlike, hence the kites are able, while hovering higher than the summits of the hills, to see what is happening in the valleys. In the Himalayas they cannot do this, because the valleys ...
— Birds of the Indian Hills • Douglas Dewar
... little berg pointed the schooner's head seawards, about west; the ice-terraces of the island lay with the wild strange gleam of their own snow radiance upon them upon the larboard quarter; around the schooner was the whiteness of her frozen seat, and her outline was an inky, exquisitely defined configuration upon it; above the crystal wall on the larboard bow rose the spume of the breaking surge in pallid bodies, glancing for an instant, and sometimes shaking a thunder into the ship when a portion of the seething water was flung by the wind upon the forecastle deck; at moments ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... the town itself we now pass to what would seem to have been the extent of territory dependent upon her. The strongest argument of this discussion is based upon the natural configuration of the land. To the west, the domain of Praeneste certainly followed those long fertile ridges accessible only from Praeneste. First, and most important, it extended along the very wide ridge known as Le Tende and Le Colonnelle which stretches down toward Gallicano. Some distance ...
— A Study Of The Topography And Municipal History Of Praeneste • Ralph Van Deman Magoffin
... the most opposite to that of stratification. It was all composed of concentric circles; and these appeared to be the section of a mass, composed altogether of concentric spheres, like those beautiful systems of configuration which agates so frequently present us with in miniature. In about eight or ten feet from the top, the circles growing large, were blended together, and gradually lost their regular appearance, until, at a greater depth, they again appeared in resemblance ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 1 (of 4) • James Hutton
... to draw together into an immense and towering configuration that included trees and air and the sweep of open park—the looming and overwhelming beauty of one of these very gods survived—Pan, the eternal and the splendid ... a mood of the Earth-life, a projection clothed with the light of stars, the cloudy air, the passion of the night, the thrill of an ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... we must be pre-admonished concerning the Letters; that there is a great Latitude almost amongst them all, and that one and the same Character is not pronounced by one and the same Configuration of the Mouth, yea, in one and the same Language; thus [a] and [e] sometimes are sounded open, and sometimes close; also [o] hath its own Latitude, so as many other Letters also may have; yea, as many as are the ...
— The Talking Deaf Man - A Method Proposed, Whereby He Who is Born Deaf, May Learn to Speak, 1692 • John Conrade Amman
... god sports with the wild and playful followers of Kuvera, possessed of weird and ghostly appearances. Glowing with its own splendour, that mountain looks resplendent as the morning sun. And no creature with his natural eyes made of flesh, can ever ascertain its shape or configuration, and neither heat nor cold prevails there, nor doth the sun shine nor do the winds blow. And, O king, neither doth senility nor hunger, nor thirst, nor death, nor fear afflict any one at that place. And, O foremost of conquerors, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... towers, giant guardian of Paris, with its four and twenty heads, always erect, with its monstrous haunches, loaded or scaled with slates, and all streaming with metallic reflections, terminated with wonderful effect the configuration of the Town towards ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... make nothin' of that," said Mr. Simlins, with again the approach to a grin;—"'taint over easy to tell whether his Vs are one side up or 'tother. Now I'd like to know from you where the hitch is. The Squire aint likely to set the Mong in a configuration just yet—but if he's swingin' a torch round, I'd jest as lief put it out ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... if he followed the Tehua he was risking his own life. But it was not the first time he had attempted such dangerous undertakings, and so far he had never failed. With the configuration of the ground and the landmarks in vegetation and scenery he was far better acquainted than the Tehua. Furthermore, he enjoyed the material advantage that the latter could not have noticed him. Everything depended on ascertaining unseen as much as possible ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... door, and be satisfied thy guilt shall never be even suspected." The jeweller's wife went home and did as she was instructed. In an hour Ahmed followed her, and told the jeweller he had made his calculations, and found by the aspect of the sun and moon, and by the configuration of the stars, that the ruby was at that moment lying under the pillow of his couch on the side farthest from the door. The jeweller thought Ahmed must be crazy; but as a ray of hope is like a ray from ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... into northern and southern portions, which has been made by some writers, is clearly shown on the map; but this division is more apparent than real. The contour interval on the map is one foot—a sufficiently small interval to show the surface configuration closely and to bring out some of its peculiarities. Depressions are shown by dotted contours. It will be noticed that while most of the mounds which mark the sites of former structures rise but 10 feet or less above the surrounding level, the profiles ...
— Casa Grande Ruin • Cosmos Mindeleff
... which he whom he is opposing, when he argues thus, imagines to be distinct and separate from the mind. Now this resemblance is more remarkable in beasts, whose souls are void of reason. But the likeness in men consists more in the configuration of the bodies; and it is of no little consequence in what bodies the soul is lodged; for there are many things which depend on the body that give an edge to the soul, many which blunt it. Aristotle indeed, says, that all men of great genius are melancholy; so that I should not have ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... example of this, he states that those who are born when many aspects of the planets occur, generally turn out busy and industrious, whether they be occupied in amassing wealth, managing public affairs, or prosecuting scientific studies. Kepler himself was born under a triple configuration, and hence, in his opinion, his ardour and activity in study; and he informs us that he knew a lady born under nearly the same configurations, "who not only makes no progress in literature, but troubles her whole family and occasions deplorable misery to ...
— The Martyrs of Science, or, The lives of Galileo, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler • David Brewster
... nearest the bottom of the horizon, presenting their dark sides to you, exhibited to the imagination all the gorgeous and picturesque appearances of arches, obelisks, mouldering towers, magnificent gardens, cities, forests, mountains, and every fantastic configuration of living creatures, and of imaginary beings; while the finely stratified clouds a little higher in the atmosphere, might really be imagined so many glorious islands of the blessed, swimming in an ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 344 (Supplementary Issue) • Various
... under an obligation, it appeared touchy and jealous of its right to an independent judgement. It is often assumed by Russophobe writers that Russia wished and intended to make a Russian province of Bulgaria, but this is very unlikely; the geographical configuration of the Balkan peninsula would not lend itself to its incorporation in the Russian Empire, the existence between the two of the compact and vigorous national block of Rumania, a Latin race and then already an independent state, was an insurmountable ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth
... that in his scientific delineation of character the professional phrenologist depends upon something more than mere configuration of skull. The great modifying conditions of health, quality and temperament in every case give us the foundation of the character. It will be seen, some medical authorities to the contrary, notwithstanding, ...
— How to Become Rich - A Treatise on Phrenology, Choice of Professions and Matrimony • William Windsor
... the motion of a material system is much assisted by the use of a series of diagrams representing the configuration, displacement and acceleration of the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various
... receiving and delivering mails of one letter, or less. The shores of this fjord are steep hills of bare rock, covered with patches of snow to the water's edge. The riven walls of cliff, with their wonderful configuration and marvellous colouring, were left behind us, and there was nothing of the grand or picturesque to redeem the savage desolation of the scenery. The chill wind, blowing direct from Nova Zembla, made us shiver, ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... where the two were engaged in some weird incantation the voyageur overheard the dusky maiden impart a strange message to the paleface by her side. "From the stars I see in the firmament, the fixed stars that predominate in the configuration, I deduce the future destiny of man. 'Tis with thee. O Robert, to live always. This elixer which I now do administer to thee has been known to our people for countless generations. The possession of it will enable thee to conquer all thine ...
— Reminiscences of Pioneer Days in St. Paul • Frank Moore
... known as the "Plough" is perhaps the most familiar configuration in the sky (see Plate XIX., p. 292). In the United States it is called the "Dipper," on account of its likeness to the outline of a saucepan, or ladle. "Charles' Wain" was the old English name for it, and readers of Caesar will recollect it under Septentriones, or the ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage
... like Timor and Buru. In the light of the terrible events of 1883, everything connected with the islands lying on either side of the Straits of Sunda is of the highest interest. Those appalling disasters which swept away part of Sumatra and Java and altered the configuration of the whole volcanic group surrounding Krakatoa took place only a few weeks after Mr. and Mrs. Forbes sailed for home. This widespread destruction seemed to the inhabitants the culmination of a series of calamitous years of drought, wet, blight, bovine ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... Lake Tahoe is a body of water in all respects adapted for the manifestation of this species of oscillation; and that, like the Swiss lakes, it is subject to Seiches. Indeed, the far greater simplicity in the configuration of the basin of Lake Tahoe than that of the Lake of Geneva must render the phenomena much less complicated in the former than in ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... If water were somewhat more rarefied, it could no longer sustain those prodigious floating buildings, called ships. Bodies that have the least ponderosity would presently sink under water. Who is it that took care to frame so just a configuration of parts, and so exact a degree of motion, as to make water so fluid, so penetrating, so slippery, so incapable of any consistency: and yet so strong to bear, and so impetuous to carry off and waft away, the most unwieldy bodies? It is docile; man leads ...
— The Existence of God • Francois de Salignac de La Mothe- Fenelon
... seething boil of foam. Huge waves dashed on shore, running yards beyond the usual marks, and threatening to sweep across the isthmus. Masses of tangled kelp, torn from the outlying rocks, washed backwards and forwards in the surf or were carried high up among the tussocks. The configuration of the shingly beach changed while one looked at it. The tops of the waves could be seen flying over Anchor Rock, seventy feet high, and spray was blowing right ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... all excitement to be off again. Every hour—every minute, indeed—was precious to him, and, as the two rode back, the advance was resumed without a moment's delay. Instead of proceeding back in a direct line, however, over the path traveled by the scout, they made a detour to the northward, the configuration of the country being such that a much nearer approach, undiscovered, could be made from this direction than from ...
— Through Apache Lands • R. H. Jayne
... configuration of the earth's surface as permanent a continuous and progressive dispersal of species from the centre to the circumference, i.e. southwards, seems inevitable. If an observer were placed above a point in St George's Channel from which one half of the globe ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... everything by electricity. A singular mortality at this time prevailed amongst the cats of Vienna, Basle, Copenhagen, and other places. Cats being so eminently an electric animal, of course he attributed this epizootic to electricity. During the same period, he persuaded himself that a peculiar configuration of clouds prevailed; this he took as a collateral proof of his electrical hypothesis. His own headaches, too, which in all probability were a mere remote effect of old age, and a direct one of an inability [Footnote: Mr. Wasianski ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... blind, soft, fleshy, yellowish white, covered with a fine down visible only under the lens, curved into a fish-hook like the larvae of the Lamellicorns, to which they bear a certain resemblance in their general configuration. The segments, including the head, number thirteen, of which nine are provided with breathing-holes with a pale, oval rim. These are the mesothorax and the first eight abdominal segments. As in the Sitaris-larvae, the last pair of stigmata, that of the eighth ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... statement of their policy; a stricter concentration of the German military forces, reform of the Customs' Unions, and a number of common institutions to protect material interests against the disadvantages which arise from the unnatural configuration ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam
... to beat the Reds," the colonel had said a thousand times. His well-worn expression had nothing to do with quantum mechanics—the actual change in atomic configuration due to the application of sufficient energy. Rather, it was a slang expression referring to a major advance in inter-planetary travel due to a maximum ...
— The Quantum Jump • Robert Wicks
... Not he! So slender of person is he, that there can be no particular impropriety in our drawing a comparison between him and that peculiar type of per son commonly called a Virginian bean-pole. Nor, when he gets himself (as is not uncommon with him) "all over" native brown homespun, does his configuration materially change, there yet remaining, and boldly refusing to be disguised, that face so full of penetration, and those features so sharp. The waggishly inclined have identified them with the ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... a corner, it was an easy matter to determine the position of a tract of land. At first hazy in its general configuration and extent, it took definition as the young men progressed with the accurate work of timber estimating. Before they had finished with it, they knew every little hollow, ridge, ravine, rock and tree in it. Out of the whole ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... were placed absolutely in the Infantry front trenches, on the sky line, no troops of any kind being in advance of them. It would have been quite useless to take up positions behind the Infantry line in the normal way, owing to the configuration of the ground, for in such cases the lowest range at which the crest could be cleared was 3,000 yards, while our targets were from 500 to 1,000 yards distant. Indeed at night, shrapnel shell with fuse set at zero was ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton
... Eaux-Vives follows the shore of the lake, and, like all the roads in Switzerland, is very narrow; in some spots, in consequence of the configuration of the hilly ground, there is scarcely space for two carriages to pass ...
— Albert Savarus • Honore de Balzac
... can be obtained for novelties in the shape of configuration of articles, or impressions by any means whatever. These patents are of great value to ...
— One Thousand Secrets of Wise and Rich Men Revealed • C. A. Bogardus
... it may be said that there exists a tendency on the part of the father to transmit the external appearance, the configuration of the head and limbs, the peculiarities of the senses and of the skin and the muscular condition; while the size of the body, and the general temperament or constitution of the child, are derived from the mother. ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... that Abraham's life has been built up by borrowing from the common stock of popular lore.7 More original is the parting of Lot and Abraham at Bethel. The district was the scene of contests between Moab and the Hebrews (cf. perhaps Judg. iii.), and if this explains part of the story, the physical configuration of the Dead Sea may have led to the legend of the destruction of inhospitable and vicious cities (see SODOM AND ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... water. These pot-holes, as a geologist would call them, are common enough in torrents, where a heavy stone is borne into a whirlpool-like eddy, and goes on grinding itself a deeper and deeper bed, the configuration of the rock-walls where it lies having prevented its being swept down at the first, while every year after it deepens its ...
— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn
... sea before us (see illustration). At this part of our journey we met two Bedouins, who greeted us with much ceremony. Here too, scattered about, we found specimens of Caucalis. Our course then lay through drearily uniform sandy ground, of somewhat broken configuration, and covered with bushy vegetation, where we passed a telegraph post bearing the notice that it was half-way between Bir el Abd and Bir el Magara. Here we overtook our camels, which, as usual, had preceded us; but we sent them on again, as we ...
— The Caravan Route between Egypt and Syria • Ludwig Salvator
... commerce, when not carried on under the national flag, have produced a lethargy and stagnation, with which the marvellous growth of free and untrammelled trade at Singapore offers a striking contrast. The Dutch have but a slender hold over the Celebes. The physical configuration of the island is singularly straggling. To this circumstance it is probably due that the population is divided, both in race and language, into ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... people of literature and refinement not to be unreasonably shocked by such vulgarities. But we should at least endeavour to correct the rash judgments which we may be disposed to form on these occasions, and should learn to recognize and to prize a sound texture and just configuration, though disguised beneath a homely or uncouth drapery. It was an Apostle who declared that he had come (to the learned and accomplished Grecians too) "not with excellency of speech, or the wisdom of words." ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... forest; and but for these marks, they could not be followed. Sometimes, however, large spaces occur in which no trees are to be seen, where, indeed, none grow. There are extensive lakes, always under water, even at the lowest ebb of the inundation. They are of all sizes and every possible configuration, from the complete circle through all the degrees of the ellipse, and not unfrequently in the form of a belt, like the channel of a river running for scores of miles between what might readily be mistaken for banks covered with a continuous thicket of low bushes, which are nothing more ...
— Our Young Folks—Vol. I, No. II, February 1865 - An Illustrated Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... before seen; the trees in particular being very curious and grotesque in shape, both as to their trunks and branches, and their foliage being of almost any other colour than green. In some cases the trees, notwithstanding their strange and abnormal configuration, were very beautiful, the large, heart-shaped leaves being of almost every conceivable tint of red, ranging from palest pink to a very deep, rich crimson, with great bunches of snow-white blossom; while at the opposite end of the scale, as it were, there occurred examples ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... treated as a function of configuration and momentum: the positions, the velocities, and the accelerations of a conservative system depend solely on each other, on initial conditions, and on mass; or, if we choose so to express it, the co-ordinates, the momenta, and the kinetic energies, of the parts of any dynamical system ...
— Life and Matter - A Criticism of Professor Haeckel's 'Riddle of the Universe' • Oliver Lodge
... Differences in the grades of enjoyment yielded by nature. Effect of contact with free nature; enjoyment derived from nature independently of a knowledge of the action of natural forces, or of the physiognomy and configuration of the surface, or of the character of vegetation. Reminiscences of the woody valleys of the Cordilleras and of the Peak of Teneriffe. Advantages of the mountainous region near the equator, where the ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... State was divided from every other State by mountains, or valleys, or gulfs, political liberty was engendered. The difficulties of cultivating a barren soil on the highlands inured the inhabitants to industry and economy, as in Scotland and New England, while the configuration of the country strengthened the powers of defense, and shut the people up from those invasions which have so often subjugated a plain and level country. These natural divisions also kept the States from political union, and fostered a ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... the drive, and shot through the twenty-seven thousand light years of cosmic ray fields, and then more leisurely returned to the galaxy. The star maps were strangely off. They could follow them, but only with difficulty as the general configuration of the constellations that were their guides were visibly altered to ...
— Invaders from the Infinite • John Wood Campbell
... that such individual traits as the configuration of the body, the color of the hair and eyes, the shape of hands and feet, the thousand-and-one subtle characteristics that make family resemblances are transmissible, and that the form, texture and capacities of the brain which fix the degree of natural intellect, are not transmissible, ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... with the character which the influence of that wayward and melancholy orb creates. Thus, the aspect of Herschel neutralises, in great measure, the boldness and ambition, and pride of heart, thou wouldst otherwise have drawn from the felicitous configuration of the stars around the Moon and Mercury at thy birth. That yearning for something beyond the narrow bounds of the world, that love for reverie, that passionate romance, yea, thy very leaning, despite thy worldly sense, to these occult and ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... now hasten to carry into execution the plans which he had originally formed only with the view to aggrandizement. He had delayed too long, either because the favourable configuration of the stars had not yet presented itself, or, as he used to say, to check the impatience of his friends, because THE TIME WAS NOT YET COME. The time, even now, was not come: but the pressure of circumstances no longer allowed him to await the favour of the stars. ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... marked every striking feature of the coast, the bearing of the headlands and the configuration of the many islands which stud these rock-bound and inhospitable shores. He spent a night on one of these islands, and the men found great quantities of ducks' eggs. The next day, still sailing to the west, he reached so fine an anchorage that he was induced to land and plant ...
— The Mariner of St. Malo: A Chronicle of the Voyages of Jacques Cartier • Stephen Leacock
... the somewhat triangular masses of what appears to be land toward one pole. As a whole, the conditions of the Martial lands and seas as regards their form, at least, is more like that of Europe than that of any other part of the earth's surface. Europe in the early Tertiary times had a configuration even more like that of Mars than it exhibits at present, for in that period the land was very much more divided than it ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... being in front of them at no great distance, the conversation of the party turned upon their peculiar configuration, and opinions were advanced by each of a more or less intelligent character; the herders insisting on the probability of their having plenty of gold in them. Suddenly, over a slight elevation in the land, ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... material, or any new and useful pattern, or print, or picture, to be either worked into or worked on, or printed, or painted, or cast, or otherwise fixed on any article of manufacture, or any new and original shape or configuration of any article of manufacture not known or ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... exclusively) derived from the male parent, and those of the organic apparatus being in like manner derived from the female parent. The former will be chiefly manifested in the external appearance, in the general configuration of the head and limbs, in the organs of the senses (including the skin) and in the locomotive apparatus; whilst the latter show themselves in the size of the body (which is primarily determined by the development of the viscera contained ...
— The Principles of Breeding • S. L. Goodale
... we may use the expression, natural capitals and capitals that are artificial. The sites of the first are determined by the configuration of the earth. When they perish it is but a temporary death, to be followed by a life often more full and brilliant than the first. The second owe their prosperity to the caprice of a sovereign, or to political combinations that pass away and ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... had been banged, and in their ignorance of the configuration of the place they did not realise that it was in the ...
— The Bag of Diamonds • George Manville Fenn |
