"Feat" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... species, mostly according to their size,—smaller but fiercer than wolves, of extraordinary strength and activity, called wild-cats, catamounts, or loup-cerviers, pronounced by the farmers lucifees. These were only taken by the gun. It was considered a useful public service, and no inconsiderable feat, to kill them. ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... there was splendid climbing talk, and we heard further tales of Sir Lionel's prowess; among others of a great jump he had made from one rock of Trifaen to the other, with only a little square of rock to light upon, just on the edge of a sheer precipice; a record feat, according to the old guide. And while the men and we women listened, the wind outside raged so wildly that now and then it seemed as if a giant fell against the house and afterward dashed pebbles against it in his fury. Then again the wind-giant ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... the offer was accepted. While the two stood together in Cristoforo's wagon, and the intruder was haranguing the people, the quack, without a movement of his face or a twitch of his body, jerked his foot against his rival's leg and threw him to the ground. He had the effrontery to proclaim the feat as magnetic entirely, accomplished without bodily means, and by virtue of ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... exultingly as they beheld the feat, and when he had lowered the weapon and silence was restored, he continued, defiantly, while his breath came quick and short: "And where do the talkers, the parleyers seek to lead us? To cringe like dogs, who lick their masters' feet, before the men who cheat us. Count Mannsfeld will ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... attack upon Goa, and proceeding against it with a vast armament and assaulting it, they at last captured it. It is said, however, that they bribed over to their interests some of its principal inhabitants, in which case its capture was not a feat of much difficulty; and the Franks on thus re-obtaining possession of Goa, hastened to construct around it extensive fortifications of vast height. After their acquisition of this place, their power became greatly increased, every day bringing some accession to it: for the Lord as he wills, ...
— Rulers of India: Albuquerque • Henry Morse Stephens
... the feat which, though far from the hardest to me, always looked to the crowd the most wonderful: it was my old master's trick of holding his five sons on his shoulder. Only I outshone him, and sustained on mine seven ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... next day we were in the fatal building. I should like to pause here and describe my costume to you, which was a quiet grey in the best of taste, but Myra says that if I do this I must describe hers too, a feat beyond me. Sufficient that she looked dazzling, that as a party we were remarkably well-dressed, and that Simpson—murmuring "dix-sept" to himself at intervals—led the way through the rooms till he found a table to ...
— The Sunny Side • A. A. Milne
... of all the achievements of the sculptors here. It represented something new in being the first great column erected to express a purely imaginative and idealistic conception. Most columns of its kind had celebrated some great figure or historic feat, usually related to war. But this column stood for those sturdy virtues that were developed, not through the hazards and the excitements and the fevers of conquest, but through the persistent and homely tests of peace, through the cultivation ...
— The City of Domes • John D. Barry
... levity. His nature has none of the richness and juiciness, none of the instinctive soul of humor, which must have vent in the ludicrous. Occasionally an adversary or adverse dogma is demolished with excellent logic, and then comes a dismal grin or chuckle at the feat, which hardly reminds us of the sly, shy smile of Addison, or the frolic intelligence which laughs in the victorious eyes of Pascal. Still, with all abatements, "The Greyson Letters" make a book well worthy of being ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... in this fashion that they journeyed to the neighboring town of Lexingham to see M. Etienne Feriaud perform his feat of looping the loop ...
— A Man of Means • P. G. Wodehouse and C. H. Bovill
... sitting upon an ass, and a colt the foal of an ass" (xxi. 5. 7), shows that Matthew did not understand the Hebrew idiom, which should be rendered "sitting upon an ass, even upon a colt, the foal of an ass," and related an impossible riding feat to fulfil the misunderstood prophecy. The whole trial scene shows ignorance of Roman customs: the judge running in and out between accused and people, offering to scourge him and let him go—a course not consistent with ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... speak; or, to explain myself according to my own system, to employ one's soul in examining the conduct of one's beast, to see it work without taking any part. This is really the most astonishing metaphysical feat ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... protection and guidance to a ship in a voyage past the sea demons who frequented the Eastern Sea, and they demanded large offerings to compensate for their services. Of course, a few adventurous shipowners had attempted to duplicate Sira Nal's feat without the aid of a priest, but no living man had seen ...
— The Players • Everett B. Cole
... been heard to say so. He has done what you nor any other mathematician as those who call themselves such have done. And what is the reason that you will not candidly acknowledge to him as you have to others that he has squared the circle shall I tell you? it is because he has performed the feat to obtain the glory of which mathematicians have battled from time immemorial that they might encircle their brows with a wreath of laurels far more glorious than ever conqueror won it is simply this that it is a poor man a {19} humble artisan who has gained that victory that you don't ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... glance away from it, and realized that he accomplished the feat with a distinct effort of will—as though the cube had willed to hold his gaze, knew he was there. His eyes, peering around the inner slope of the crater—which dipped over, some hundreds of feet down, and plunged downward to some unknown depth—noted ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... soldier, having witnessed the feat of pugilism, doubled his fists and extended them awkwardly, coming with a rush. Mr. Pike suddenly squatted and leaned forward, balancing on his finger-tips, until number two was about to fall upon him and crush him, and then he arose with that rigid right shoulder aimed as a catapult. ...
— The Slim Princess • George Ade
... [pp. 61-63]: I should like to quote here another feat of arms related by Robert of Clari, one of those feats that serve to explain how the Crusaders obtained mastery - the mastery of perfect fearlessness - over the Greeks. Robert of Clari, then, relates how a small body of the besiegers, ten knights and nine sergeants, had come before a postem ...
— Memoirs or Chronicle of The Fourth Crusade and The Conquest of Constantinople • Geoffrey de Villehardouin
... Wager's children; for the boy, Albert, would soon be nine years old, and, as Mrs. Abbott confessed, he had given her a great deal of trouble. Both the children were intractable, hated lessons, and played alarming pranks; Master Albert's latest feat might have cost him his life, for he struck furiously through a pane of glass at a child mocking him from the other side, and was all but fainting from loss of blood when Mrs. Abbott came to his help. Plainly this youngster must be sent ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... leather armor on their limbs and body. During the fight with the second bull, which was an extremely fierce and powerful creature, a young girl of eighteen dressed in male attire, who was trained to the brutal business, took an active part in the arena with the banderilleros. One remarkable feat which she performed was that of leaping by means of a pole completely over the bull when he was charging at her. At Madrid, where the author witnessed a similar exhibition, the introduction of a young girl among the fighters was omitted, but otherwise ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... now to bless the years of hard work that had made his body vigorous and his muscles hard and strong. Slowly he drew himself up out of the clinging ooze which closed behind him with a sickening, sucking sound. Once clear of the mud, it was an easy feat to go up the rope hand over hand and soon he was standing beside Charley at the foot of the tree where they were speedily joined by the ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... years since the success of Colonel Colt in the application of the repeating principle to fire-arms was regarded as a feat in which every American felt a national pride. It was such a vast improvement upon anything which had previously existed, and the importance of it was so obvious, that it became as much a matter of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... endure the winter's cold as well as he? Or we look up with all our eyes of admiration; will find no fault in our hero: declare his beauty and proportions perfect; his critics envious detractors, and so forth. Yesterday, before he performed his feat, he was nobody. Who cared about his birthplace, his parentage, or the color of his hair? To-day, by some single achievement, or by a series of great actions to which his genius accustoms us, he is famous, and ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the field. Louis crossed the Rhine without difficulty, when the waters were low, with only four or five hundred horsemen to dispute his passage. This famous passage was the subject of ridiculous panegyrics by both painters and poets. It was generally regarded as a prodigious feat, especially by the people of Paris, as if it were another passage of ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... locomotive engine, though excellent at running, would be a poor hand at flying. That is not its vocation. The engine will draw fifteen heavy carriages fifty miles in an hour; and that remains as a noble feat, even though it be ascertained that the engine could not jump over a brook which would be cleared easily by the veriest screw. We ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... observation and deeper in-sight, saw the indications of a great river there, and after lying outside for nine days, waiting a favorable opportunity to enter, succeeded in doing so on the 11th of May, 1792, being the first to accomplish that feat, and explored the lower portion of it. He gave to the river and to the southern point the names they ...
— Life at Puget Sound: With Sketches of Travel in Washington Territory, British Columbia, Oregon and California • Caroline C. Leighton
... rise again almost immediately, and climb the steep river-bank with an air of serene indifference. His companion having performed the same exploit, the two clambered up to the projection of which we have spoken, and again dropped into the river waters; a less wonderful feat than their former, but still one requiring both ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... This feat of the squirrel delighted Lady Mary, who expressed her joy at the bravery of the little creature. Besides, she said she had heard that gray squirrels, when they wished to go to a distance in search of food, would all ...
— In The Forest • Catharine Parr Traill
... where the refuse had accumulated for many years. When Heracles presented himself before the king, and offered to cleanse his stables in one day, provided he should receive in return a tenth part of the herds, Augeas, thinking the feat impossible, accepted his offer in the presence ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... Peter Bines at this season of the year was a feat never lightly to be undertaken, nor for any trivial end. It being now the 10th of June, it could be known with certainty only that in one of four States he was prowling through some wooded canon, toiling over a ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... executed it. The new Pharaoh ordered a memorial of some important personage or event. In the first place, a mighty stone was dislodged from its connections, and lifted, unbroken, from the quarry. This was a feat from which our modern stone-workers shrink dismayed. The Egyptians appear to have handled these huge monoliths as our artisans handle hearthstones and doorsteps, for the land actually bristled with such giant columns. They were ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... have strayed into Mexico and South America, and only two or three belong to Europe, where many of ours are tenderly cultivated in gardens, as they should be here, had not Nature been so lavish. To name all these species, or the asters, the sparrows, and the warblers at sight is a feat probably no one living can perform; nevertheless, certain of the commoner goldenrods have well-defined peculiarities that a little field practice soon ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... good-sized bullock. Its width of shoulder and apparent strength were enormous, and they have never yet been tamed: Mr Van Amburgh would be puzzled to handle one of them. The Indians reckon the slaying of one of these animals as a much greater feat than killing a man, and the proudest ornament they can wear is a necklace of the ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... to realize what it was. "Why," they said, "we have often heard better music than that." Dr. Tanner was not without his share of fame in this far-away country. During his fast in America, a similar, though not voluntary, feat was being performed here. A Kirghiz messenger who had been despatched into the mountains during the winter was lost in the snow, and remained for twenty-eight days without food. He was found at last, crazed by hunger. When asked what he would ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... of Cagliostro and the Countess de la Motte, to fuse into The Diamond Necklace. To write the essay on Werner and the German Playwrights he swam through seas of trash. He digested the whole of Diderot for one review article. He seems to have read through Jean Paul Richter, a feat to accomplish which Germans require a special dictionary. When engaged on the Civil War he routed up a whole shoal of obscure seventeenth-century papers from Yarmouth, the remnant of a yet larger heap, "read hundredweights of dreary books," and endured "a hundred Museum headaches." ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... This feat of engineering is considered the most important work of its kind ever done. Engineers from all over the Mississippi have gone to look ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 33, June 24, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... established his name and fame. Within three months after going to work for the Syndicate ranch he was known for a hundred miles around as the man who had broken Jim Wilder's outlaw and won the horse by that unparalleled feat. ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
... extremely amused at the surprise she expressed at Jane's feat in climbing from Wangat. Evidently Jane's reputation is not that of ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... Ambassadress had to call out the name of each one in a loud voice; and when the last one had passed she followed her out of the room, walking sideways so as not to turn her back on the royalties,—something of a feat when towing a train about fifteen feet long. When all the Ambassadresses had so passed, it was the turn of the Ambassadors, who carried out substantially the same programme, substituting low bows for curtsies. The Ambassadors were followed by the Ministers' ...
— My Four Years in Germany • James W. Gerard
... common belief that this line offers as good a chance as any other and that at last the army will be given a fair run, and permitted to begin a general engagement and fight it out to the end. If Buller goes in and wins he will have accomplished a wonderful feat of arms, and will gain the lasting honour and gratitude of his country. If he is beaten he will deserve the respect and sympathy of all true soldiers as a man who has tried to the best of his ability to perform a task for ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... likewise, that princes many times make themselves desires, and set their hearts upon toys; sometimes upon a building; sometimes upon erecting of an order; sometimes upon the advancing of a person; sometimes upon obtaining excellency in some art, or feat of the hand; as Nero for playing on the harp, Domitian for certainty of the hand with the arrow, Commodus for playing at fence, Caracalla for driving chariots, and the like. This seemeth incredible, unto those that know ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... from a chair his hat and riding-whip "'Tis no easy feat," he said, with grimness, "to put one's self in the place of Lewis Rand. But then, other things are not easy either. I'll not grudge a little straining." He stood before the Major, holding out his hand—a handsome figure in his mourning dress, resolute, quiet, no longer ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... have given everything he possessed away to his worthless companions. Some horses had been brought out, on two of which the captains rode daily over the plains of Matavai, to the great astonishment of the natives, who on all occasions assembled to witness this, to them, extraordinary feat. ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... degenerate, modern wretch, Though in the genial month of May, My dripping limbs I faintly stretch, And think I've done a feat to-day. ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... involved deserves to be heartily recommended. Dick never heard of the lines, but he knew the principle well, so he began to "never mind it" by sitting down beside his companions and whistling vociferously. As the wind rendered this a difficult feat, he took to singing instead. After that he said, "Let's eat a bite, Joe, ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... an open space, drew a circle around him, and then began to build up on the sward two little human figures about three feet high, as boys build up figures of snow at the commencement of a thaw. Harlequin performs a somewhat similar feat in one of the pantomimes. He first sets up two carrots on end, to serve for legs; balances on them the head of a large cabbage, to serve for a body; sticks on two other carrots, to serve for arms; places a round turnip between them, to serve for a head; gives the crazy erection a blow with ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... hostilities, not having the necessary strength to mobilize at war establishment — Effect of this on the general plans — The way the Territorials dwindled after taking the field — Lord K. inclined at first to pile up divisions without providing them with the requisite reservoirs of reserves — His feat in organizing five regular divisions in addition to those in the Expeditionary Force — His immediate recognition of the magnitude of the contest — He makes things hum in the War Office — His differences ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... goods and hidden them in my father's house.' Then said Ed Denef, 'When thou seest the Amir Khalid don his harness of war, beg him to equip thee like himself and take thee with him. Then do thou some feat of prowess before the Khalif and he will say to thee, "Ask a boon of me, O Aslan." And do thou answer, "I ask of thee that thou avenge me of my father's murderer." If he say, "Thy father is alive and is ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume III • Anonymous
... last move was made, Garrofat gasped with amazement. None had ever accomplished that feat save the Rajah Onalba himself. A hurried consultation with Doola, however, restored his courage, and, rising, he said, "Praise be to Allah, but thou art a youth of wondrous wisdom, and I would be false to my trust as the Regent of this kingdom if I failed to submit ...
— Bright-Wits, Prince of Mogadore • Burren Laughlin and L. L. Flood
... took refuge under the guns of the Dardanelles. Kanaris, unknown before, became from this exploit a famous man in Europe. It was to no stroke of fortune or mere audacity that he owed his success, but to the finest combination of nerve and nautical skill. His feat, which others were constantly attempting, but with little success, to imitate, was repeated by him in the same year. He was the most brilliant of Greek seamen, a simple and modest hero; and after his splendid achievements in the war of liberation, he served his country well in a political career. ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... supreme. She was so sensible that most likely she could invent a menu all out of her own head, he thought, feeling that the girl who got him through the "Wedding March" with but six mistakes, was capable of any intellectual feat. He had not the slightest doubt that it was in his power to marry either of the girls as soon as he chose to intimate his choice; and in the mean time he found it very agreeable to maintain a kind of mental possibility of future proprietorship of ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... traveller, too experienced a wanderer, to be put out of temper by this enforced rest. The men had worked very well hitherto. It had, in its way, been a great feat of generalship, this leading through a wild country of men unprepared for travel, scantily provisioned, disorganised by recent events. No accident had happened, no serious delay had been incurred, although the rate of progress had necessarily ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... a load it was no easy matter climbing over the seats to the door. Yet the feat was accomplished, and two minutes later, with an exclamation of relief, Richard pitched his baggage to the bank beside the track, and ...
— Richard Dare's Venture • Edward Stratemeyer
... the table. We took him by the legs and shoulders, Parseval and the English captain and I, but Parseval and the Englishman laughed so much that we had some trouble in getting him to a bed, on which we laid him and where he slept till morning. I know not whether it was for this wound and feat of arms that his native town raised a statue ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... instant a frantic mule was performing the almost impossible feat of running away on a treadmill. At the same time, to Billy Brackett's dismay and to the astonishment of his audience, the several pictures of the panorama were flitting by in a bewildering stream of color, the effect of which was kaleidoscopic ...
— Raftmates - A Story of the Great River • Kirk Munroe
... Kingsley must shriek, "Windrush!" "Intellectual Epicurism!" and disturb himself in a somewhat diverting manner. Pollok declaimed against the attempt to lay hold of the earth with one hand and heaven with the other. But that is the peculiar feat for which the American is born,—to bring together seeing and doing, principle and practice, eternity and to-day. The American is given, they say, to extremes. True, but to both extremes; he belongs to the two antipodes. To the one he appertains ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... vulture—nothing but bone and sinew. Count Vavel was an athletic man, strong and powerful; but had the room been filled with men as strong and powerful as he, and had they every one hurled themselves upon Satan Laczi, he would have had no difficulty in defending himself. He had performed such a feat more than once. This evening, however, he made no move to defend himself, but looked calmly at his assailant, and said: "The Herr Count can see that I have no weapons; and yet, there are enough here, had I wanted to arm myself against an attack. I am ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai
... are not public. Only through the publication of every one of their proceedings are the chambers related to the larger public opinion; and it is shown that what one imagines at home with his wife and friends is one thing, and what happens in a great assembly, where one feat of eloquence wrecks another, is quite ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... the building. Never had such a feat been seen in the arena before, and men and women alike standing up waved their hands with frantic enthusiasm. Beric had not escaped altogether unhurt, for as the lion struck out at him it had torn away a piece of flesh from his side, and the blood was streaming down ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty
... command of the sea which they finally maintained against all rivals. In 1579 Sir Francis Drake sailed completely round the world. He was the first sea captain who had ever done so, for Magellan had died in mid-career fifty-seven years before. This notable feat was accompanied by his successful capture of many Spanish treasure ships. Explorer, warrior, enricher of the realm, he at once became a national hero. Queen Elizabeth, a patriot ruler who always loved a hero for his service to the state, knighted Drake on board his flagship; and a poet sang his ...
— All Afloat - A Chronicle of Craft and Waterways • William Wood
... seek a certain issue and to Irby to prevent it, she might, whichever way the matter drifted, gather some advantage if she could contrive to claim credit for the trend; an if which she felt amply able to take care of. To keep two men fooled was no great feat, nor even to beguile her grandmother, whose gadfly insistence centred ever on the Brodnax fortune as their only true objective; but so to control things as not to fool herself at last—that was the pinch. It pinched more than it would could ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... your elixir, You help him straight: there you have made a friend. Another has the palsy or the dropsy, He takes of your incombustible stuff, He's young again: there you have made a friend, A lady that is past the feat of body, Though not of mind, and hath her face decay'd Beyond all cure of paintings, you restore, With the oil of talc: there you have made a friend; And all her friends. A lord that is a leper, A knight ...
— The Alchemist • Ben Jonson
... to the period of the Moors, and formed part of the Grand Mosque of Seville. It is 220 ells in height, and is ascended not by stairs or ladders, but by a vaulted pathway, in the manner of an inclined plane; this path is by no means steep, so that a cavalier might ride up to the top, a feat which Ferdinand the Seventh is said to have accomplished. The view from the summit is very extensive, and on a fine clear day the ridge called the Sierra de Ronda may be discovered though the distance is upward of twenty-two leagues. The cathedral itself is a noble Gothic ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... looked at him, and made way for him, but none spoke to him. There was something in his face that forbade speech. He was a great man once more—a greater man than ever; and he had, if the persistent rumors were true, accomplished an almost incomprehensible feat, even for Jethro Bass. There was another reason, too, why they stared at him. In all those twelve weeks of that most trying of all sessions he had not once gone into the street, and he had been less than ever ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... paleness that would have been a warning to tyrants of better discrimination. Once again, while being rebuked in this manner, his self-control left him. With white face and blazing eyes he darted at Mr. Knapp, and had almost repeated Johnson's feat on the poop when an iron belaying-pin in the hands of the captain descended upon him and broke his left arm. Mr. Knapp's fists and boots completed his tutelage, and he was carried to his bunk with another lesson learned. Johnson, swearing ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... life to be in danger, but she would have loved saving it. She fell to pondering possible conditions in which she could perform this feat, while ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... act was a feat of teetering. A broad and massive teeter-board was brought in, and balanced across a support about two feet high. The sulky leopard, at a sign from Tomaso, slouched up to it, pulled one end to the ground, and mounted. At the centre he balanced cautiously for a moment ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... notwithstanding our increased population, there are fewer men now who attempt them. In the beginning of this century there were many famous walking matches, and incomparably the best walker was Captain Barclay of Ury. His paramount feat, which was once very familiar to the elderly men of the present time, was that of walking a thousand miles in a thousand hours, but of late years that feat has been frequently equalled and overpassed. I am willing to allow much influence to the modern conditions of walking under shelter and ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... Kirsty, not quite sure how the feat was to be achieved. "A little hot something for his inside will be good, but indeed, many's the drink I ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... ball from the rifle which never missed sped on its way, and the warrior threw up his hands and measured his length on the ground. An instant afterward Elam was mounted on his horse again and going toward the fort as fast as ever. At this feat loud yells came from the Indians. The death of the warrior and Elam's fair chance for escape filled them with rage. The nearest savage fired, and this time the bullet found a mark in Elam's body. It struck him near the ...
— Elam Storm, The Wolfer - The Lost Nugget • Harry Castlemon
... of that of Junnoo, from the Choonjerma pass, the former bearing the same relation to Monte Rosa that the latter does to Kinchinjunga. Junnoo, though incomparably the more stupendous mass, not only rising 10,000 feat higher above the sea, but towering 4000 feet higher above the ridge on which it is supported, is not nearly so remarkable in outline, so sharp, or so peaked as is Mount Cervin: it is a very much grander, but far less picturesque object. The whiteness ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... and grasping the reins, she endeavored to stop him; but he only held in his head, and danced sideways up the street with more animation and spirit than ever. She thought of throwing herself off, but the immense height rendered such a feat utterly unsafe; she endeavored to rein the horse up to the side-walk; but now he had caught sight of the motley array of trainers, and of the gay horses and gayer uniforms of the officers, and, regardless alike of bit and rein, he started off at full speed, to join the long-forgotten ...
— Lewie - Or, The Bended Twig • Cousin Cicely
... Ameni, "as if you had performed some heroic feat; and yet the men you killed were only unarmed and pious citizens, who were roused to indignation by a gross and shameless outrage. I cannot conceive whence the warrior-spirit should have fallen on a gardener's son—and a ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... this practical conclusion under the brunt of the children's assault was a remarkable feat. As I dribbled the stuff over the sorry devilgrass they kicked the pump—and my shins—mimicking my actions, tripping me as they skipped under my legs, getting wet with the Metamorphizer—I hoped with mutually deleterious effect—and generally making me more than ever thankful ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... art is its penetration by a photographic ray of substances until now called opaque. Professor Roentgen's account of how he wrought this feat forms one of the most stirring chapters in the history of science. Next follows an account of the telegraph as it dispenses with metallic conductors altogether, and trusts itself to that weightless ether which brings to the eye the luminous wave. To ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... course for FREMANTLE to dumfog HEWETT, (And show a world of watchers how to do it) Is first-rate practice; an eye-opener verily; Only I fancy I should laugh more merrily, If my eyes were the only optics gazing, Upon a feat that's no doubt most amazing; The Thames' mouth occupied by a fine fleet! The sight—as the fleet's mine—of course is sweet, But there's one thought that rather makes me blench:— Supposing that FREMANTLE ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 93, August 13, 1887 • Various
... and Galileo. Till the great work was completely done, he resisted firmly, and almost angrily, every attempt that was made by men of science, here or on the Continent, to draw him away from his official duties. [714] The old officers of the Mint had thought it a great feat to coin silver to the amount of fifteen thousand pounds in a week. When Montague talked of thirty or forty thousand, these men of form and precedent pronounced the thing impracticable. But the energy of the young Chancellor of the Exchequer ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... most of the town was up and excited. Betting had been high as to whether the sheriff would get the prisoner safe into the jail, and even the winners seemed disappointed that he had accomplished this feat, although they praised his skilful management. But the sheriff knew that if the lady's body was found, that if Mr. Morris could find any proof against the negro, that if Mr. Morris even expressed a wish that the negro should hang, the ...
— Southern Lights and Shadows • Edited by William Dean Howells & Henry Mills Alden
... the task fell to Mr Hannay, of Glasgow, who succeeded in producing very small but comparatively soft diamonds, by heating lampblack under great pressure, in company with one or two other ingredients. The process was a costly one, and beyond being a great scientific feat, the discovery led to ...
— The Story of a Piece of Coal - What It Is, Whence It Comes, and Whither It Goes • Edward A. Martin
... it apart, making three or four bites of it. After some practice he learned to swallow a berry whole, though it often required three or four attempts, and seemed almost more than he could manage. When he had accomplished this feat, he sat with his head drawn down into his shoulders, as though he found himself uncomfortably stuffed. Having eaten two or three raspberries, our distinguished visitor always picked another, with which he flew away,—doubtless for the babies growing ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... reached but 110 names. We shall dismiss the statistics of this exhibition with the remark that it has precedence of its fellows in financial success as well as in time, having cleared a hundred and seventy-odd thousand pounds, and left the Kensington Museum as a memorial of that creditable feat, besides sending its cast-off but still serviceable induviae to Sydenham, where it enshrines another museum, chiefly of architectural reproductions in plaster, in a sempiternal coruscation of fountains, fireworks ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... a little volume, entitled Contes populaires, Prejuges, Patois, Proverbes de l'Arrondissement de Bayeux, recueillis et publies, par F. Pluquet, the frontispiece of which consists of a sufficiently graphic representation of the worthy canon's feat. Pluquet concludes his narrative by ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 233, April 15, 1854 • Various
... of which he was proud. The distance between Hudson and Cleveland was but twenty-four miles, but that distance had never been done in one day by any team. Mr. Baldwin thought the time had come for performing the feat, and accordingly set out on the journey. Just at tea time he drew rein in front of Merwin's tavern, at the corner of Superior street and Vineyard lane, and shouted to the landlord. The guests had just ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... everything against him, and yet he made that impossible shot; and not only made it, but did it with absolute confidence, saying, "Be ready to clench." Now a person like that would have undertaken that same feat with a brickbat, and with Cooper to help he would have ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... of English history. It must be enough to say here that he is assumed to have been born in Ajaccio, in Corsica, in 1769; that when he was ten years old he tried to become French rather than Italian—a feat which he never successfully accomplished—by entering the military school of Brienne; that he served Louis the Sixteenth with indifference and the Revolution with an ambition that was often baffled, and that he struck the first of his many strokes ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... though terrified servitor, Madame Tallafferr rustled forward. She took her stand upon the brink of the fountain in almost the exact spot where she had disarmed MacLachan, the tailor, drunk, songful, and suicidal, two years before. Since that feat an almost mythologic awe had attached itself to ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... thought would be immediately broken: but not so; to the surprise of all, she caught the narrow framework between the panes with her hand, in an instant attained the proper impetus, and sprang back again to the cage she had left—a feat requiring not only great strength, but the ...
— Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature • Thomas H. Huxley
... ashamed of their name. Well, let fond mortals go now in a needless quest of some Medea, Circe, Venus, or some enchanted fountain, for a restorative of age, whereas the accurate performance of this feat lies only within the ability of ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... limbs as gracefully as Caesar. His courtesy was invincible and untiring: he was anxious to defer and conform even to my insular prejudices. Discovering that I was in the habit of daily immersing in cold water—a feat not to be accomplished without much toil, trouble, and abrasion of the cuticle—he thought it necessary to simulate a like performance, though nothing would have tempted him to incur such needless danger. His endeavors ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... intelligent of his companions were cited to appear at Court to narrate their adventures. His Majesty received them with marked deference. Elcano was rewarded with a life pension of 500 ducats (worth at that date about L112 10s.), and as a lasting remembrance of his unprecedented feat, his royal master knighted him and conceded to him the right of using on his escutcheon a globe bearing the ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... maidenhood, and fair and feat 'Mid spring's fresh foison chant I merrily: Thanks be to Love and to my ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... hand of the abominable alliance of Natacha Feodorovna with the Nihilists who attempt the assassination of her father your intervention has permitted that proof to escape him. And you have boasted of the feat, monsieur, so that we can only consider you responsible for the ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux
... certain harshness, which seems to come from a too urgent desire to be at once concise and explicit. Modern Love, published in 1862, remains Meredith's masterpiece in poetry, and it will always remain, beside certain things of Donne and of Browning, an astonishing feat in the vivisection of the heart in verse. It is packed with imagination, but with imagination of so nakedly human a kind that there is hardly an ornament, hardly an image, in the verse: it is like scraps of broken, of heart-broken, talk, overheard and jotted down at random, hardly suggesting a story, ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... I must have been born iron in a day of iron, for survive I did, to give the lie to Tostig's promise of dwarf-hood. I outgrew all beakers and tankards, and not for long could he half-drown me in his mead pot. This last was a favourite feat of his. It was his raw humour, a sally ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... he came down the course a mile away. It made his heart beat quicker with a victorious headlong delight, as his knees pressed closer into Forest King's flanks, and, half stirrupless like the Arabs, he thundered forward to the greatest riding feat of his life. His face was very calm still, but his blood was in tumult, the delirium of pace had got on him, a minute of life like this was worth a year, and he knew that he would win or die for it, as the land seemed to fly like a black sheet under him, and, in that killing speed, ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... affair than a railway trip would have been. In the first place, it was a real flight—from his creditors whom he had to evade. Next he had to dodge the Russian sentries, whose boxes were placed on the boundary line only a thousand yards apart. A friend discovered a way of accomplishing this feat, and Wagner presently found himself on the ship, with his wife and his enormous Newfoundland dog. In his trunk he had what he hoped would help him to begin a brilliant career in Paris: one opera completed,—"The Novice of Palermo;" two acts of ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... an experiment under the conditions necessary to make it conclusive. To prepare the born-blind to answer philosophical interrogatories truly, and then to put these interrogatories rightly, would have been a feat, he declares, not unworthy of the united talents of Newton, Descartes, Locke, and Leibnitz. Unless the patient were placed in such conditions as this, Diderot thinks there would be more profit in questioning a blind person of good sense, than in the answers ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... had known courts and embassies and retired from them upon private life. . . . But who can explain friendship, even after all the essays written upon it? Certainly to be friends with a dead man was to my father a feat neither ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... be able to go round the world nowadays, and write a descriptive record of the tour that is vivid and fresh is a positive literary feat. It has been successfully accomplished in Our Stolen Summer by Mrs. Boyd, who with no ulterior object in making a book journeyed over four continents in company with her husband, and picked up ...
— A Versailles Christmas-Tide • Mary Stuart Boyd
... which they succeeded in bringing up every time, but I can scarcely believe that they caught them before they reached the bottom. They remained long enough under water each time, not only to pick the coin up, but also to look for it. The feat was certainly surprising, but not, as some travellers affirm, so remarkable that similar ones might not ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... bowed to their debtor, evidently wondering why the deuce they troubled to be polite to an old man who kept them out of their money. Then, the secretary reappearing with a cup of China tea, they watched while their debtor drank it. The feat was tremulous. Would he get through without spilling it all down his front, or choking? To those unaccustomed to his private life it was slightly miraculous. He put the cup down empty, tremblingly removed some yellow drops from ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... removed from the top, and niches made convenient in the brick); to run a quarter of a mile; to purchase a pint of rum-shrub on credit; to brave all the Doctor's outlying spies, and to clamber back into the playground again; during the performance of which feat, his foot had slipt, and the bottle was broken, and the shrub had been spilt, and his pantaloons had been damaged, and he appeared before his employer a perfectly guilty ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... eating at once, and the three boarders watched him scoop up the liquid as if his life depended upon finishing the work. The amount of noise he made while accomplishing the feat was a revelation to the Maynard girls and ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... snakes are capable of swallowing comparatively large eggs. But is the way in which the feat is accomplished generally understood? That is the question. No doubt a big snake glides jauntily to a moderately-sized egg, grips it with its in-curved teeth, the jaws loosen and begin their alternating movement, and unhook themselves ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... was a shrewd fellow. He found out what was wanting, and resolved to remedy it. So, the next morning's posters announced that on that evening Mr. Eglantine Mowbray would perform, at the conclusion, his terrific and unparalleled feat of rolling ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... has been dropped by Fletcher, who has thus achieved the remarkable musical feat of turning a nightingale's note into a sparrow's. The mutilation of Philomela by the hands of Tereus was a jest compared to the mutilation of Shakespeare by the hands of Fletcher: who thereby reduced the close of the first verse into agreement if not into accordance ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... and hatred, and in evidence of his declaration should make a whole cemetery disembogue its dead alive, or cause the sun suddenly to sink from its station at noon and return again, would his wonderful performance prove his horrible doctrine? Why, or how, then, would a similar feat prove the opposite doctrine? Plainly, there is not, on rigid logical principles, any connecting tie or evidencing coherence between a physical miracle and a moral doctrine.22 We admit the correctness ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... adventures, and, as chance directed, encounter others as bewildered as themselves. Our chivalric Sandricourt found nine young seigneurs of the court of Charles the Eighth of France, who answered all his wishes. To sanction this glorious feat it was necessary to obtain leave from the king, and a herald of the Duke of Orleans to distribute the cartel or challenge all over France, announcing that from such a day ten young lords would stand ready to combat, in those different places, in the neighbourhood of Sandricourt's chateau. ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... beak remained sticking in his belt. He felt more frightened than he had ever done before. He began to pray to God, and feared above all that he might die without having done anything good or kind; and he so wanted to live, and to live so as to perform a feat of self-sacrifice. ...
— The Cossacks • Leo Tolstoy
... to 'im, 'there's one thing you 'aven't tried,' I says," the station-master continued, raising his voice by a Herculean feat still higher. ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... covered with blood, streaming from a severe wound on the forehead, the iron fretwork having proved harder than the baby's head. The scar remains down to the present time, and gives me the valuable peculiarity of only wrinkling up one side of my forehead when I raise my eyebrows, a feat that I defy any of my readers to emulate. The heavy cut has, I suppose, so injured the muscles in that spot that they have lost the normal ...
— Autobiographical Sketches • Annie Besant
... head under his arm, and another with one leg around his neck; all eliciting more or less laughter, as the feat was more or less comical. During the dance every species of deformity was imitated and caricatured, for this is the tagarota. It was a series of grotesque and repulsive pictures. Some of the dancers, flinging themselves flat, would roll across the open space without moving hand or foot. This ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... him with a mighty brain in a powerful body; he had a physique equal to the performance of what suggestion soever his splendid intellectuals made. To him the incredible feat of walking seventy miles within the compass of a day was mere child's play; then, when the printer became clamorous, he would immure himself in his wonderful den and reel off copy until that printer cried "Hold; enough!" It was no unusual thing ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field
... no pencil, it occurred to him that he could write with the lead bullet of one of his revolver cartridges, which simple feat he had often performed in idle moments ...
— The She Boss - A Western Story • Arthur Preston Hankins
... feigned astonishment, pretending humbly to renounce such honour, while increasing his wiles and fascinations; he even went so far as to shed tears, his most difficult feat ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... and prevent his charging; and if the lion is already charging, the man ought at that distance to be able to stop him. But the amount of prowess which warrants a man in relying on his ability to perform this feat does not by any means justify him in thinking that, for instance, he can crawl after a wounded lion into thick cover. I have known men of indifferent prowess to perform this latter feat successfully, but at least as often they have been unsuccessful, and in these cases the result ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... to Quiberon, we were compelled, on the following day, to arise before seven o'clock, a feat which required some courage. While we were still stiff from fatigue and shivering with sleep, we got into a boat along with a white horse, two drummers, the same one-eyed gendarme and the same soldier who, this time, however, did not lecture anybody. As drunk as a ...
— Over Strand and Field • Gustave Flaubert
... at the small hands doubtfully. They were none too little for many a forbidden feat. How had he ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... powder,' rejoined Robert. But Arthur, boy-like, sprang up-stairs with the rifle, which had often done execution among the wild-fowl of his native moorlands. Certainly it was a feat to hit such a prominent mark as that mountain of blubber; and Arthur felt justly ashamed of himself when the animal beat the water furiously and dived ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... performs a conspicuous character in the tragedy. This was to be acted in public before the prince in the great open square of the city, and I expected to acquire much reputation and profit from the feat of strength which I should perform, which consists of carrying an immense sack full of water on the back, accompanied by additional exertions. I had a rival, who accomplished the task on the last festival; but as the sack ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... bull. The door was raised and the animal came rushing in; he was a terrible one to look at. Blinded by the lights and the scene, he rushed and roared around the arena; I trembled in my seat, although I was in no possible danger. The first feat of the bull-fighters was to plant a rosette on the shoulders of the animal with a barb implanted in his flesh, which enraged him more, with colored ribbons, two or three feet in length, attached to the rosette, which was flying in the air as he went around, ...
— The Adventures of a Forty-niner • Daniel Knower
... that nature has indicated. Excepting only the Houses of Parliament in London, our national capitol at Washington is the most spacious and imposing national edifice in the world. By the unparalleled feat of a subterranean tunnel two miles out under the bottom of the lake, Chicago obtains her water. The work of constructing a railroad tunnel across the Detroit river is already commenced, and the traveler will soon pass, in his steam palace, under the bed of that river, while the immense commerce of ...
— The United States in the Light of Prophecy • Uriah Smith
... was really remarkably easy. They had only to scale quite a low piece of wall, and drop on to the roof of the shed on the other side, then scramble down into Count Sutri's garden. In less than five minutes the feat was accomplished, and three rather awed but delighted girls were speeding along a green alley in ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... second volume I shall tell of that tremendous feat of arms which overwhelmed the Turkish Armies, drove them through 400 miles of country in six weeks, and gave cavalry an opportunity of proving that, despite all the arts and devices of modern warfare, with fighters and observers in the ...
— How Jerusalem Was Won - Being the Record of Allenby's Campaign in Palestine • W.T. Massey
... every nerve. The athletic young Swiss was a practised and expert swimmer, or it is improbable that even these strong impulses could have overcome the instinct of self-preservation. In a tranquil basin, it would have been no extraordinary or unusual feat for him to conquer the distance between the Winkelried and the shores of Vaud; but, like all the others, on casting himself into the water, he was obliged to shape his course at random, and this, too, amid such a driving spray ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... card.—To slip a card is to pretend to take the bottom card of the pack, and in reality to take the card which precedes it. To perform this feat without detection is a very simple affair, but ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... that spirit of theatrical speculation upon which we have so often depended for the large undertakings in music. It was a belief based on something like religious zeal, and under the circumstances what he did was an even more remarkable feat than that accomplished by his father in 1884. I sometimes thought at the time that he was driven into the enterprise more by impulse than by reason, and the fact that he occasionally had the same sort of a notion is evidenced ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... came up to Ciabhan, that was beyond all the Men of Dea or the Sons of the Gael that were in the house, in shape and in walk and in name, and he put the nine rods in his hand. And Ciabhan stood up and he did the feat before them all, the same as if he had never learned to do ...
— Gods and Fighting Men • Lady I. A. Gregory
... turning a face beaming with satisfaction to Marguerite, "I can continue my prayers on the other side of the fortress. Oh! it is quite safe..." he added, as with a fearsome hand he touched his engineering feat with gingerly pride, "and you will be quite private.... Try and forget that the old abbe is in the room.... He does not count... really he does not count... he has ceased to be of any moment these many months now that Saint ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... reared at the edge of salt water, as they had been, were strong, splendid swimmers. This night, however, with the rough waves, the feat was especially dangerous. ...
— The Motor Boat Club and The Wireless - The Dot, Dash and Dare Cruise • H. Irving Hancock
... for the Revolution Book, with a "pathetic feeling" which brought "tears" to her eyes. From beyond the waters there is a hand held out; beyond the waters too live brothers. I would only the Book were an Epic, a Dante, or undying thing, that New England might boast in after times of this feat of hers; and put stupid, poundless, and penniless Old England to the blush about it! But after all, that is no matter; the feebler the well- meant Book is, the more "pathetic" is the whole transaction: and so we will go on, fuller than ever of "desperate hope" (if you know what that is), ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... Lopes de Sequeira, the good soldier who lost his life, by a Portuguese hand, at the battle of Matamba (Sept. 4th, 1681). A picture in Dutch tiles (azulejos) was placed on the right side of the altar to commemorate the feat. ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... courage, great quickness and shrewdness of perception, and promptitude in execution. The predictions uttered by the hardy rangers of the forest concerning a boy like Carson are seldom at fault; and Kit was one who, by many a youthful feat worthy the muscle of riper years, had endeared himself to their honest love. It was among such men and for such reason, that Kit Carson thus early in life had won the influence and ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... of the Berkshire men and others who witnessed this feat was heard to rise above even the yells of combatants, the shrieks of the wounded, the rattle and crash of fire-arms, and the general ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne
... charge of the pack train, I returned two miles on our trail with the two packers, Reynolds and Bean, in search of him. We found him wedged between two trees, evidently enjoying a rest, which he sorely needed after his remarkable acrobatic feat of the morning. We are camped in a basin not far from the lake, which surrounds us on three sides—east, north and west. Mr. Everts has not yet come into camp, and we ...
— The Discovery of Yellowstone Park • Nathaniel Pitt Langford
... aperture in the strong and root-bound soil. Or we followed him, so far as he thought it safe for us to do so, up the foundations of the castle, and in fear and wonder that no repetition of the adventurous feat ever diminished, saw him take the young starling from the crevice beneath the tuft of wall-flowers. What was there of the bold and daring that Lawrie Logan was not, in our belief, able to perform? We were all several years younger—boys from nine to fifteen—and he had shot ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... proposing it from the Treasury Bench. And what substitute does the honourable Baronet give his followers to console them for the loss of their favourite Registration Bill? Even this bill for the endowment of Maynooth College. Was such a feat of legerdemain ever seen? And can we wonder that the eager, honest, hotheaded Protestants, who raised you to power in the confident hope that you would curtail the privileges of the Roman Catholics, ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... wheel of a wagon, and actually climb up until she could reach a bag of sweet-potatoes that lay under the seat, he laughed until he cried. Without knowing or caring how much amusement she was causing, the cow stole a potato from the bag, jumped down, and quietly munched it. This feat was repeated again and again, until finally an end was put to Mark's and the cow's enjoyment of the meal, by the arrival of the colored owner of both wagon and potatoes, who indignantly drove the cow away, ...
— Wakulla - A Story of Adventure in Florida • Kirk Munroe
... federalism, again, of America or of Switzerland is the consequence of the existence of the States which make up the Federation. The United Kingdom does not consist of States. The world has heard of the difficulty of forming a republic without republicans: this feat would appear to be easy of performance in comparison with the achievement of erecting federation without the States which form its natural members. In America or in Switzerland federalism has developed because existing States wished to be combined into some kind of national unity. Federalism in ...
— England's Case Against Home Rule • Albert Venn Dicey
... soothe the fevered bodies within prison walls. What a chance of escape they had missed during the noisy hours of the storm, when not a soul was abroad in the place! Knowing the opportunity was there, they tried desperately to force the door. But the feat was far beyond all ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... not to blind us to the enormous power that was needed for the reproduction of a turbulent and not quite aimless chaos of the soul, in which man seemed to be divorced alike from his brother-men in the present, and from all the long succession and endeavour of men in the past. It was no small feat to rise to a height that should command so much, and to exhibit with all the force of life a world that had broken ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 3: Byron • John Morley
... brains are capable of performing certain useful tricks, and that if we do not compel our brains to perform those tricks we shall suffer. Thus one day we run home and proclaim to our delighted parents that eleven twelves are 132. A feat of the brain! So it goes on until our parents begin to look up to us because we can chatter of cosines or sketch the foreign policy of Louis XIV. Good! But not a word about the principles of the art of living yet! Only a few detached rules from our parents, ...
— The Human Machine • E. Arnold Bennett
... Montemar, in an impetuous manner, storms them there:—which feat procures for him the title, Duke of Bitonto; and finishes off the First of the Sicilies. And indeed, we may say, finishes Both the Sicilies: our poor Kaiser having no considerable force in either, nor means of sending any; the Sea-Powers ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... the wee hero was guidin' his 'bus through the maze o' cloods, a strange sicht met his ees. It was the caircus of MacBissing! They were evolutin' by numbers, performin' their Great Feat of Balancin' an' Barebacked Ridin', Aerial Trapeze an' Tight-rope Walkin', Loopin' the Loop by the death-defyin' Brothers Fritz, together with many laughable an' amusin' interludes by Whimsical Walker, the Laird o' Laughter, the whole ...
— Tam O' The Scoots • Edgar Wallace
... brook below the terraces in front of the Hive, breathing the pure, balmy air of outdoors instead of the indoor air of the workshop, reclining on the thick greensward, when some two or three essayed the not very difficult feat of jumping the merrily running brook, from embankment to embankment, and dared Tirrell, one of the number, to follow. He was the oldest and a little less supple than the others; and in trying the jump deliberately landed about three ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... to maintain dignity along with relaxation—a feat which Mr. Frost and Mr. E. A. Robinson have occasionally accomplished. And from this it is but a step to the extreme simplicity of Miss Lowell's To ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... Accomplished feat with considerable skill. Appeared from official statement that, as sometimes happens in Ireland in analogous cases—on the Curragh, for example—someone had blundered into direct opposition to Ministerial ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, August 5th, 1914 • Various
... Knowing that such a feat would be impossible for them to perform, the parents fervently prayed to Odin to help them, and in answer to their entreaties the god came down to earth, and changed the boy into a tiny grain of wheat, which he hid ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... are often thrust before my path; but although they are most unsubstantial, it is not easy to destroy them. There is not a more difficult feat known than to cut through a ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou |
