"Flattened" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... rushing on considerably ahead of his men when a volley fired from among some rocks laid three of their number low. The rest halted to return the fire of their concealed enemy, but, seeing no one, they let fly among the rooks, against which their bullets were flattened, without doing further execution. Before they could re-load a party of desperadoes sprang out, and seizing Tom, dragged him along with them. In vain Tom endeavoured to free himself, expecting every instant to feel the point of a sword, or its edge, at the back of ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston
... giving it a silvery white appearance, and converting him into a clairvoyant at night. According to Professors Brown, Seidy and Gibbs, the negro's hair is not tubular, like the white man's, but it is eccentrically elliptical, with flattened edges, the coloring matter residing in the epidermis, and not in tubes. In the place of a tube, the shaft of each hair is surrounded with a scaly covering like sheep's wool, and, like wool, is capable of being felted. True hair does not possess that property. The degeneration ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... when the lights went out, but Mryna heard the panic of frightened voices. Far away someone was screaming. Running feet clattered toward her. Mryna flattened herself against the outer wall. An indistinct body of men shot ...
— The Guardians • Irving Cox
... Their books lie dusty and undisturbed on the top shelf of libraries; whilst there the Bible stands, with all the scribblings wiped off the page, as though they had never been! Opponents fire their small shot against the great Rock of Ages, and the little pellets fall flattened, and only scale off a bit of the moss that has gathered there! My brother, let the history of the past teach you and me, with other deeper thoughts, a very calm and triumphant confidence about all ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... bed seem more like the mattresses such as Morris had, and such as Mr. Cameron must be accustomed to. Helen's mind being the most suggestive solved the problem first, and a large comfortable was brought from the box in the garret and folded carefully over the bed, which, thus hardened and flattened, "seemed like a mattress," Katy said, for she tried it, pronouncing it good, and feeling quite well satisfied with the room when it was finished. And certainly it was not wholly uninviting with its snowy bed, whose ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... It has the widest range of expression of the wood-winds, and its chief structural difference is in its mouth-piece. It has a single flat reed, which is much wider than that of the oboe or bassoon, and is fastened by a metallic band and screw to the flattened side of the mouth-piece, whose other side is cut down, chisel shape, for convenience. Its voice is rich, mellow, less reedy, and much fuller and more limpid than the voice of the oboe, which Berlioz tries to describe by analogy ...
— How to Listen to Music, 7th ed. - Hints and Suggestions to Untaught Lovers of the Art • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... exactly with it, but only obliquely across it. This requirement, as much as anything, has prevented the use of machines in polishing diamonds. The table is usually first polished on, then the four top slopes, dividing the top surface into quarters, then each of the four ridges thus left, is flattened, making eight facets and finally 32 facets, exclusive of the table, are made upon the top of the brilliant. The stone is then reversed and 24 facets, and the culet, polished on the back. As each facet nears its proper shape the stone is placed ...
— A Text-Book of Precious Stones for Jewelers and the Gem-Loving Public • Frank Bertram Wade
... into bomb-proofs, cracked steadily over the heads of comrades who piled up sandbags to block communication trenches; grenade-bombs rained down through the smoke into trenches, blowing bloody gaps in huddling masses of struggling Teutons until they flattened back against the parados and lifted arms and gun-butts stammering out, "Comrades! Comrades!"—in the ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... the arms of Hercules, hands worthy of Domitian, a stomach which sobriety held within the limits of the majestic, to use a saying of Brillaet-Savarin. His face was a good deal like that of the Emperor Alexander. The Tartar type was in the little eyes and the flattened nose turned slightly up, in the frigid lips and the short chin. The forehead was low and narrow. Though his temperament was lymphatic, the devout Isidore was under the influence of a conjugal passion which time ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... the pile of things near their horses, and put down the rope; and then they started off in all directions looking for more plunder. Two of them came to the depot and walked about on the platform over my head. I flattened out on the ground and scarcely breathed, expecting every minute that they would look under. I heard them talking and trying the windows. I thought they were going away; then there was a sound of breaking ...
— Track's End • Hayden Carruth
... as well as wonderful and beautiful appearances. Ships are sometimes seen with their hulls flattened and their masts and sails drawn out to monstrous dimensions; or the hulls are heightened so as to appear like heavy castle walls, while the masts and sails are rendered ludicrously squat and disproportioned; and not only so, but ships are often seen with their images ...
— The Ocean and its Wonders • R.M. Ballantyne
... it was she who listened, to something beyond the reach of even McCord's faculties, her neck stiff and her ears flattened. I looked at McCord and found him brooding at the animal with a sort of listless malevolence. "Quick! She has kittens somewhere about." I shook his elbow sharply. "When ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... deep in perfumed fern and brake; the big timber lay before them. She moved forward, light gun swung easily across her leather-padded shoulder; and on the wood's sunny edge she seated herself, straight young back against a giant pine, gun balanced across her flattened knees. ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... beggar had pulled back the leathern flap of the cathedral door, and they stood in a haze of gold and perfume that seemed to rise and fall on the mighty undulations of the organ. Here the press was as thick as without; and as Tony flattened himself against a pillar, he heard a pretty voice at his elbow:—"Oh, ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 2 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... certain, but I don't think there are any orchids I know that have aerial rootlets quite like that. It may be my fancy, of course. You see they are a little flattened at ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... these remarks was a slumbering figure, so muffled in shawl and cloak, that it would have been matter of impossibility to guess at its sex but for a brown beaver bonnet and green veil which ornamented the head, and which, having been crushed and flattened, for two hundred and fifty miles, in that particular angle of the vehicle from which the lady's snores now proceeded, presented an appearance sufficiently ludicrous to have moved less risible muscles than those of John Browdie's ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... variability in man. It is occasionally quite absent, or again is largely developed. The passage is sometimes completely closed for half or two-thirds of its length, with the terminal part consisting of a flattened solid expansion. In the orang this appendage is long and convoluted: in man it arises from the end of the short caecum, and is commonly from four to five inches in length, being only about the third of an inch in diameter. Not only is it useless, but it is sometimes ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... Weighted as it was with heavy stones, it crushed the life out of her in a second. There was a coughing gasp, cut off abruptly; and the flattened form lay still, the wide-open mouth and protruding tongue jammed down among the mosses. At the crash the cub had jumped back in terror. Then he sat up on his haunches and looked ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... rested its huge disk upon a low mud wall that crested a rise to westward, and flattened at the bottom from its own weight apparently. A dozen dried-out false-acacia-trees shivered as the faintest puff in all the world of stifling wind moved through them; and a hundred thousand tiny squirrels kept up their aimless scampering ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy
... of the reasons why the heavenly life is apt to appear in prospect so wearisome a thing is, because we are brought up to feel that the whole character is flattened out and charged with a serene kind of priggishness, which takes all the salt out of life. The word "saintly," so terribly misapplied on earth, grows to mean, to many of us, an irritating sort of kindness, which treats the interests and animated elements ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson
... background. It was a parade of a strange medley of styles showing fancy used clothing such as constitute the luxury of the poor. The gentlemen's hats caused the most merriment, old hats preserved for years in dark and dusty cupboards, in a variety of comical forms: tall ones, flattened ones, sharply peaked ones, hats with extraordinary brims, curled back or flat, too narrow or too wide. Then at the very end, Madame Gaudron came along with her bright dress over her bulging belly and caused the smiles of the audience to grow even wider. The procession made ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... at the south side of the apse was probably one of the responds of an arch against which the vaulting abutted, as in the crypt. Under the east window the curve of the wall has been flattened, probably to afford a better back for the altar, of which the step remains. On the north side is an aumbry, with a recess adjoining it in the side of the buttress; and on the south side is a smaller ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Ripon - A Short History of the Church and a Description of Its Fabric • Cecil Walter Charles Hallett
... lips were set as those of a taciturn man, but not grimly, and their corners bore two lines as of old smiles that had buried their joys there forever. A long and rather heavy nose, sensitive at the nostrils. High cheek bones. A good forehead, but rather too flattened at the temples. Long, thin meshes of white hair escaping through the border of the high fox-skin cap. The complexion was bronze and the face beardless. This last feature is said to be characteristic of low vitality, but ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... understood as saying that his personal appearance was upon the whole, prepossessing. On the contrary, his expression, if I may venture to use the term, (and he certainly had a good deal of expression), was, if not decidedly bad, at the least exceedingly sinister. His flattened head, and long leather-like snout together with a pair of projecting goggle eyes, so situated as to command a view both in front and rear, and which he kept turning restlessly on every side, contributed greatly to enhance this forbidding aspect. Every moment he seemed to grow fiercer and ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... of the second floor room where Mr. Dorrance sat with a number of the officials, Don, Jane, and I could see across the harbor and to the ridge where the enemy was operating. It was not much over two miles from us. The huge, slightly flattened moon had risen. The bay and the distant little hills were flooded with its light. We could see, off on the ridge-top, the tiny flashing green beams. But there was no sound save the turmoil of the ...
— The White Invaders • Raymond King Cummings
... black, with yellow feather-shafts and a brilliant scarlet head-band, must be conspicuous. But so perfectly did the soft colors harmonize with the rough, sun-touched bark, so misleading were the shadows of the leaves moving in the breeze, and so motionless was the bird flattened against the trunk, that one might look directly at it and ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... They flattened their noses against the front window. The newspapers and dirty sackings still lay scattered on the floor as they had fallen from Dickie when he had got up in the morning after the night when he had ...
— Harding's luck • E. [Edith] Nesbit
... to take it out whenever I wished, to cut whatever I liked. Let my friends know. I had just begun to go to school, under Yossel Dardaki, and I already had a knife, that is, what was almost a knife. I made it myself. I tore a goose-quill out of a feather brush, cut off one end, and flattened out the other. I pretended it was a knife and ...
— Jewish Children • Sholem Naumovich Rabinovich
... instant the whole face of the world had changed. The tranquil sunset had vanished, the sky was dark with scurrying clouds, everything was flattened and swaying with the gale. I glanced back to see if my bungalow was still in a general way standing, then staggered forwards towards the trees amongst which Cavor had vanished, and through whose tall and leaf-denuded branches shone the flames ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... of an inch in diameter. About four thousand of the smallest would be required to cover the dot put over the letter i in writing. The shape of cells varies greatly; the normal form, though, is spheroidal as in the cells of fat, but they often become[7] many-sided—sometimes flattened as in the cuticle, and sometimes elongated into a simple filament as in fibrous ...
— Was Man Created? • Henry A. Mott
... boulders. It was an ideal position and Calumet did not hesitate to take advantage of it. Dropping from the rear of the wagon, he made a leap for the gully, landing in its bottom upon all fours. He heard a crash, and a bullet flattened itself against one of the rocks ...
— The Boss of the Lazy Y • Charles Alden Seltzer
... his hand to Madeleine with a joyful gesture, then waved his hat defiantly in Rupert's direction, and with a spring disappeared, just as the pistol cracked, drawing a shriek of terror from the girl, and its bullet flattened itself against the upper stone of the wall—considerably ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... was out of sight and hearing, Kazan whined, and the crest along his spine flattened. He looked wistfully toward the glow of the fire. The man had not hurt him, and the three-quarters of him that was dog ...
— Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... Lower Orinoco, or in the missions of Piritu, differ from the other Indians not only in the tallness of their stature, but also in the regularity of their features. Their noses are smaller, and less flattened; the cheek-bones are not so high; and their physiognomy has less of the Mongol character. Their eyes, which are darker than those of the other hordes of Guiana, denote intelligence, and it may even be said, the habit of reflection. The Caribs have a ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V3 • Alexander von Humboldt
... she would rise like some beautiful, disgusted feline, which something has disturbed in her dim and favourite corner, and move lithely away to another room. And it almost seemed as though her little, warm, closely-chiselled ears actually flattened with bored annoyance as the din of Wilding's vociferous greeting to ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... cutlasses in our mouths, scrambled on board. No one appeared. A perfect silence reigned over the deck. Our first business was to shorten sail, and round-to the ship. Mr Gale flew to the helm, and put it down, while we flattened in the topsail-braces, and clewed up top-gallant-sails, and brailed up the courses, throwing the foretop-sail aback. As this work occupied all our attention, we had no time to make any remarks as to the state of affairs on deck. As I was ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... palm. I call it an arbor, because the latticed sides were covered with flowering vines, of great variety and beauty. Within were bamboo seats and a table, whose material I afterward discovered was the dried leaves of a gigantic flag, flattened and made hard by a peculiar process of drawing them between joints of bamboo, somewhat as cane is pressed between rollers. Upon the table were numerous manuscripts, written, as I afterwards learned, on a paper made of the same flag. These manuscripts were removed, and a repast set on the table ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... withdrawn, he walked confidently under the front of the rollway, glancing with practiced eye at the perpendicular wall of logs over him. Then, as a man pries jack-straws, he clamped his peavey and tugged sharply. At once the rollway flattened and toppled. A mighty splash, a hurl of flying foam and crushing timbers, and the spot on which the riverman had stood was buried beneath twenty feet of solid green wood. To Thorpe it seemed that Shearer must have been ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... out a flattened bullet and was holding it up for her to see. "It was meant for me, and I've always had an idea that I heard it ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... sand, and pieces of mortar. In a few seconds, however, these things all disappeared, and there revealed itself to the eyes of Clewe a perfectly smooth surface of brown earth. This continued for some little time, now and then a rounded or a flattened stone appearing in it, and then ...
— The Great Stone of Sardis • Frank R. Stockton
... protected by an artificial coating of actual gum-elastic, would it be a safe experiment to drop upon it, from a height of twelve feet, a flint stone weighing fifty pounds? We are expressly told that the ribs bent under the terrible shock, and sank, flattened, even to the backbone. Is it not certain, that human ribs and cartilages, in their normal state, would have snapped off, in spite of the interposed protection? Must we not, then, imagine osseous and cartilaginous fibre, too, transmuted? ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... throughout to the pictures presented to us; stars and star-clusters gradually fading away into remoter distance. This nebula, of spherical shape—formed of coarser particles than the previous mist, and reflecting or radiating a more brilliant effulgence—was in rapid whirling motion. It flattened into the form of a disc, apparently almost circular, of considerable depth or thickness, visibly denser in the centre and thinner towards the rounded edge. Presently it condensed and contracted, leaving at ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... apart, each minute lessening this distance. The latter ship was struggling along, her bows plunging into the seas to the hawse-holes, while the former had a swift, easy motion through the troughs, and along the summits of the waves, her flattened sails aiding in steadying her in the heavy lurches that unavoidably accompanied such a movement. Still, a sea would occasionally break against her weather side, sending its crest upward in a brilliant ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... arbor-vitae is apt to be confused with the true white cedar (Chamaecyparis thyoides) but the leaves of the latter are sharp-pointed and not flattened or fan-shaped. ...
— Studies of Trees • Jacob Joshua Levison
... I had been startled not a little by coming now and again on facts that seemed to bear this out. Strange tracks through untrodden grass suggested footsteps of the unseen. Flattened spaces of peculiar shape in the standing rye, where human beings could not have intruded, looked marvellously like human visitation. Or I lay concealed and watched the crows in a road-side field. What was it caused them to look up suddenly and flap ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various
... was from wood shelter to the great rat-house, but she was an hour in crawling that small space. From stump to brush, from log to bunch of grass she sneaked, a flattened form, and the Partridges saw her not. They fed about, the biggest uttering the ringing call that first had fallen on ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton
... out the first few bars, which say, "By yon bonnie bank and by yon bonnie brae," everybody within hearing would have cried with joy if the piano had fallen over on him and flattened his equator. ...
— You Should Worry Says John Henry • George V. Hobart
... she could see the spider-silk cover on the bed. Right in the middle of that sheer, gossamer expanse was a sparkling heap of gems, the dumped contents of some jewel case. Bat had jumped to the foot of the bed and flattened out as cats will, watching those gems, watching ...
— All Cats Are Gray • Andre Alice Norton
... distinguished person indeed. The portrait of Simon Fraser had a great success. Never did portrait bear more distinctly the impress of fidelity. The unwieldy trunk, the swollen legs, the horrible, cunning, satyr-like face with its queerly lifted eyebrows, its flattened sensual nose, and its enormous mouth, the odd dogmatic gesture with which the index finger of the left hand touches the thumb of the right: all these things William Hogarth immortalized—making Simon Fraser (Lord Lovat) wellnigh ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... they had used up their bad luck. At last they came to a surface-fragment a couple of hundred yards long. They climbed over its edge. The thin sunshine hit dried soil, and something like corn-stubble in rows. Ahead was a solid stone structure, half flattened. Beside it a fallen trunk showed its roots. Vegetation was charred black by the absolute dryness of space. There was a fragment of a road, a wall, ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... himself in removing bits of flattened cucumbers from his juice-soaked hip pockets. "Just wait until ma sees these pants," he said ruefully. "Hey, John, I'm ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... words struck Cuxson like a whip, and he stretched out his hand impulsively towards the smooth head with flattened ears and ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... 19,000 later on—there were many fine drawings, which had been used by the engravers, and vast numbers of interesting and valuable studies in colour and in pencil. Four hundred of these were extricated from the chaos, and with infinite pains cleaned, flattened, mounted, dated and described, and placed in sliding frames in cabinets devised by Ruskin, or else in swivel frames, to let both sides of the paper be seen. The first results of the work were shown in an Exhibition at Marlborough House during the winter, for which he wrote ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... possessors of normal sight. That defect of vision, whether congenital or induced by the confinements of early training, persists and increases throughout life, like other forms of myopia. The man who sees a ball as slightly flattened, like a tangerine orange too tightly packed (an "oblate spheroid" would be the physicist's brief description), seeks the society of other men who share his illusion; and the company of them take arms against the opposing ...
— H. G. Wells • J. D. Beresford
... Upon the page of folio, close to an illuminated capital, the black drop had flattened itself. Around the original sphere had been shed splashes of all conceivable shapes-rays, rockets, dotted lines, arrowheads, all the freakish impromptu of chaos. Next, the slope lending its aid, the channels had drained into ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin
... obvious in the structure of the teeth and talons of the tiger; and in that of the legs and claws of the parasite which clings to the hair on the tiger's body. But in the beautifully plumed seed of the dandelion, and in the flattened and fringed legs of the water-beetle, the relation seems at first confined to the elements of air and water. Yet the advantage of plumed seeds no doubt stands in the closest relations to the land being already thickly clothed with other plants; so that ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... Orinoco, as well as in the district of the Fichtelgebirge (Seissen), in Galicia, and between the Pacific and the highlands of Mexico (on the Papagallo), I have seen granite in large, flattened spherical masses, which could be divided, like basalt, into concentric layers. In the valley of Irtysch, between Buchtarminsk and Ustkamenogorsk, granite covers transition slate for a space of four miles,* penetrating into it from above in narrow, ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... feet apart, and across them, at 3 feet from each end, he lashed two stout staves, about 4 feet long. Then a "leading" horse was selected, that is, one used to lead caravans, and on his back a large bag of straw was well girthed and flattened down. The frame was firmly tied on this, and the canoe, wrapped in carpets, was placed on the frame. This simple method was used for three months over sand and snow, rock and jungle, mud and marsh—anywhere indeed that a horse could go. The frame was elevated in front, so as to allow the horse's ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... and the people in Michigan Avenue were going home or sauntering back and forth, looking into the shop windows, with nothing much to do. The street was still light, although the sun had gone. Hidden behind the buildings of the city, the sun flattened itself out on an invisible horizon and spread a vast peacock tail of color across the sky. In Grant Park, opposite the Public Library, men lay on their backs with their hands folded under their heads and stared up into the colors ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... where there are few guns about, this is still one of the commonest as it is perhaps the most conspicuous member of the woodpecker family, but its striking glossy black-and-white body and its still more striking crimson head, flattened out against the side of a tree like a target, where it is feeding, have made it all too tempting a mark for the rifles of the sportsmen and the sling-shots of small boys. As if sufficient attention were not attracted to it by its plumage, it must needs keep up a noisy, guttural rattle, ker-r-ruck, ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... Thorn produced a woman's housewife, carefully untied it, though all its implements were missing but a little thimble, and from one of its compartments took a flattened bullet and ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... his chest with an appearance of some little pride and pulled a dirty and wrinkled newspaper from the inside pocket of his greatcoat. As he glanced down the advertisement column, with his head thrust forward and the paper flattened out upon his knee, I took a good look at the man and endeavoured, after the fashion of my companion, to read the indications which might be presented ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... captives and warriors belonging to both on the Assyrian sculptures. The common herd of prisoners employed on public labor and driven by overseers brandishing sticks have an unmistakably Turanian type of features—high cheek-bones, broad, flattened face, etc., while the generals, ministers and nobles have all the dignity and beauty of the handsomest Jewish type. "Elam," the name under which the country is best known both from the Bible and later monuments, ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... round, sometimes flattened at the top, close and firm; loose leaves numerous; stems short; reliable for heading, hardy, and a good keeper. The name "Large Late Drumhead" includes varieties raised by several seedsmen in this country, ...
— Cabbages and Cauliflowers: How to Grow Them • James John Howard Gregory
... almost complete. All the books had evidently arrived in the course of the last twenty-four hours; and there was not a single object of any value in the room. In one corner you beheld a collection of crushed and flattened cigars, coiled pocket-handkerchiefs, shirts which had been turned to do double duty, and cravats that had reached a third edition; while a sordid array of old boots stood gaping in another angle of the room among ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... native ugliness; in fact, it is difficult to ascribe the proper share in the features of this hideous picture to nature, to the barbarous skill with which they were self-disfigured, or to the terror and hatred of the Romans. Their noses were flattened by their nurses, their cheeks were gashed by an iron instrument, that the scars might look more fearful, and prevent the growth of the beard. Jornandes and ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... a representative of the dominant Caucasian stock I had, for the moment, no apt reply ready. Later I thought of a very fitting retort, which undoubtedly would have flattened that impertinent Indian as flat as a flounder; unfortunately, though, it only came to me after several days of study, and by that time I was upward of a thousand miles away from him. But I am saving it to use on him the next time I go back to the Grand Canon. No mere Indian can slander our ...
— Roughing it De Luxe • Irvin S. Cobb
... la Rue cell," if we may so call one of these elements, consists of a zinc rod, the lower portion of which is embedded in a solid electrolyte, viz., chloride of silver, with which are connected two flattened silver wires to serve as electrodes. When these are united and the silver chloride moistened, chemical action begins, and a weak but constant current ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 275 • Various
... Monte Morello opposite wrapped in mists. It was visibly snowing on the great Apennines, and suddenly, though very gently, it began to snow here also, wrapping the blue distance, the yellow vineyards, in thin veils. Brisk cold. At the house, when I returned from my walk, the children were flattened against the window-panes, shouting for joy at the snow. We grown-up folk, did we live wiser lives, might be ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... was amusing to hear them speculate upon the remarkable occurrence which had, in fact, upset the wits of the whole town. Priests and vergers and sacristans had visited the campanile, and one of them had brought away a flattened piece of lead, which looked as if it might have been a bullet; but the suggestion that eight bullets could have hit the bell in succession without anybody hearing a sound was treated with ridicule. I believe the bell was subsequently exorcised with holy water. I was afraid to remain ...
— Stories By English Authors: Italy • Various
... that Proctor, forty years ago, gave full reasons for this "capture" theory in his "Expanse of Heaven," and also that the same writer showed that the Milky Way could not have the enormous lateral extension he gives to it, but that it cannot really be much flattened. He does not even mention the proofs given of this both by Proctor and, I think, by Herbert Spencer, while in Mr. Webb's volume (opposite p. 212) is a diagram showing the "Coal Sack" as a "vacant lane" running quite through and across the successive ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... commenced to unfasten the traces, and he worked swiftly, dexterously, while the girl watched him, directing him sometimes from her seat in the buggy. Presently he lifted the remaining strap, but before he could snap the hook in the ring, the colt's ears flattened back, and he gripped Tisdale's hand. Instantly Miss Armitage snatched the whip and was on her feet. "Whoa, Nip," she cried, and cut the vixen lightly between the ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... topsails jerked aloft and flattened, the schooner took the wind. Although the earthquake had subsided, the waters both inside the reef and outside were much troubled. Where the two jaws of the rocky barrier still remained, the ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes
... blue-jay flitting swift, The squirrel poising on the drift, Erect, alert, his broad gray tail Set to the north wind like a sail. It came to pass, our little lass, With flattened face against the glass, And eyes in which the tender dew Of pity shone, stood gazing through The narrow space her rosy lips Had melted from the frost's eclipse: "Oh, see," she cried, "the poor blue-jays! What is it that the black crow says? The ...
— Required Poems for Reading and Memorizing - Third and Fourth Grades, Prescribed by State Courses of Study • Anonymous
... sometimes by cascades of damp, and sometimes by the outlines of picture-frames since removed, how the paper flapped loose at the corners, and a great flake of plaster had fallen from the ceiling. The room itself was a cheerless one to return to at this inauspicious hour. A flattened sofa would, later in the evening, become a bed; one of the tables concealed a washing apparatus; his clothes and boots were disagreeably mixed with books which bore the gilt of college arms; and, for decoration, there hung upon the wall photographs ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... walked slowly up to the window, flattened his fat nose against the cold glass, and shading his eyes that his sight might not be affected by the ruddy glow of the fire, looked abroad. Then he walked slowly back to his old seat in the chimney-corner, and, composing himself in it with a slight shiver, ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... fist but a roll of paper, and if ever a chap hankered arter a stick or a stun, they say he did. But it was all jest perairie grass; nary rock nor a piece of timber within three mile. Snake seemed to 'preciate his advantage, and flattened his head and whirred his rattle sassier 'n ever. Surveyor chap couldn't stan' that. So what does he dew, like a blamed fool, but jest off with his boot and hurl it, 'lowin' he could kill a rattler that way? ...
— The Young Surveyor; - or Jack on the Prairies • J. T. Trowbridge
... shut up in haste, when the emptied streets are flooded, and almost black, and the paper lanterns, piteous objects, wet through and extinguished—I find myself, I know not how it happens, flattened against a wall, under the projecting eaves, alone in the company of Mademoiselle Fraise, my cousin, who is crying bitterly because her fine robe is wet through. And in the noise of the rain, which is still falling, and splashing ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti
... Johnstone River. Clinging to the wreck until it drifted a few miles south, the Kanakas and crew battled through the waves and eventually reached the shore. Of those who placed their faith on the sandbank not one was spared. The seas raced over it, pounded and flattened it. The men upon it were ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... her spectacles down again; and, turning the seam which she had been sewing, flattened it with her thumb-nail. She made this action expressive of having foreseen such a result, and of having struggled against it, neglected and alone. "Very well, then. I hope you accepted him?" ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... evening dress, might have been of any age from thirty to fifty. His eyes were deep-set and glassy, like those of a consumptive. His hair was jet-black, his face clean-shaven; the skin, not ivory, but a dirty white, and flabby, like the belly of a toad. His thin and bloodless lips were flattened over a row of pure white teeth with glistening specks of gold that opened when he smiled; closing again slowly like an automaton's. His shrunken, colorless hands lay on the black cloth like huge white spiders; their long, thin legs of fingers turned up at the tips—stealthy, creeping fingers. ...
— A Gentleman Vagabond and Some Others • F. Hopkinson Smith
... and skidding, the vehicle seemed literally to precipitate itself to the depths below, and, as the horses, with necks outstretched and mouths beginning to gape, with ears flattened and streaming flanks, reached the bottom, the desperate nature of the journey became even more apparent. There was neither wavering nor mercy in the eyes of the teamster and his escort as they ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... now close at hand; bullets whistled continually around and pinged with a dull thud as they flattened against ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... Belopolsky in 1896[1447] to oscillate once in nearly three days, the secondary globe being apparently quite obscure. Further study of the movements thus betrayed elicited the fact that the major axis of the eclipse traversed revolves in a period of 2,100 days, as a consequence, most likely, of the flattened shape of the stars.[1448] Still more unexpected was the simultaneous assignment, by Campbell and Newall, of a duplex character to Capella.[1449] Here both components shine, though with a different quality of light, one giving a pure solar spectrum, the other claiming prismatic affinity ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... introduced by a furious squall which tore the fore square-sail to ribbons. A curious sight is seen at sea: "two serpents—said to be often seen on the coast. One dark olive, with light yellow rings round it, and flattened tail; the other lighter in color. They seem to be ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... extracted from his pocket, with some difficulty, a bulky cheque-book, and flattened it out on the table with almost reverent fingers; for he had not yet come to regard the possession of a cheque-book as a commonplace circumstance ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... doublet, with his sword about his neck, and he saw a sorceress overtake one of the watch, who cried out violently. Peredur attacked the sorceress, and struck her upon the head with his sword, so that he flattened her helmet and her headpiece like a dish upon her head. "Thy mercy, goodly Peredur, son of Evrawc, and the mercy of Heaven." "How knowest thou, hag, that I am Peredur?" "By destiny, and the foreknowledge that I should suffer harm from thee. And thou shalt ...
— The Mabinogion Vol. 1 (of 3) • Owen M. Edwards
... paradise. And indeed it was a very real achievement. Nevertheless Hilda's irrational contempt would not admit this. She saw in Freehold Villas nothing but narrowness (what long narrow strips of gardens, and what narrow homes all flattened together!), and uniformity, and brickiness, and polished brassiness, and righteousness, and an ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... morning guns boomed from the Arsenal and the Navy Yard, thousands of noses flattened against window-glass in the anxiety of the owners to see if the heavens were propitious; but there was no sign of sunshine. As the day advanced there were some bright streaks in the dull gray of ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... an interval of some minutes, the outer door is heard to close, rapid steps cross the drawingroom, Madame claps her hands and Monsieur comes in. He does not look very pleased, as he advances holding awkwardly in his left hand a flattened parcel, the contents ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... him feverishly hot and trembling. It was already growing dark outside, although he could not know that until he lifted the quilts an inch or two and peered up at the dirty window-panes. He was afraid to rise, as yet, and flattened himself out with an impatient sigh, as he gathered the bedding over his head again and held back his breath to listen. There may have been a minute or more of absolute silence in which he lay there, and then his blood froze to ice in ...
— Gallegher and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... Looking at his face Vassilyev, for some reason, thought that a man with such a face might steal, might murder, might bear false witness. But the face was really interesting: a big forehead, gray eyes, a little flattened nose, thin compressed lips, and a blankly stupid and at the same time insolent expression like that of a young harrier overtaking a hare. Vassilyev thought it would be nice to touch this man's hair, to see whether it was soft or coarse. It must be ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... Marie flattened herself against the bank—one more dark shadow among the others—and none too soon, for the second man was close upon them, so close they could hear the heavy rasp of his breathing. Eveley had not time to raise herself for another spring, so she crouched against the bank in ...
— Eve to the Rescue • Ethel Hueston
... lower part of a ship; and there is no doubt that the form of the fish originally suggested the form of the ship. The body is in general slender, gradually diminishing towards each of its extremities, and flattened on each of its sides. This is precisely the form of the lower part of the hull of a ship; and it enables both the animal and the vessel, with comparative ease, to penetrate and divide the resisting medium for which they have been adapted. The velocity of a ship, however, ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... dead. True, the ball had hit him, oh yes, it had hit him, but it had glanced off against a family Bible, which he carried in his waistcoat in case of illness, struck some hymns that he had in his hip-pocket, and, glancing off again, had flattened itself against De Vaux's diary of his life in the desert, ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... the size of the vaginal inlet to such an extent as to render coitus impossible until the hymen has been torn. Through the vaginal orifice access is gained to the interior of the vagina, a tubular structure, but flattened from before backwards, so that in the quiescent state the anterior and posterior walls of the passage are in apposition. The uterus or womb is a muscular, pear-shaped organ, with an elongated central cavity, which opens into the upper part of the vagina. ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll
... like a hawk that has seen a meadow mouse amongst the grass. They climbed steeply, swung clean over, so that the earth was oddly slipping past far above their heads; swung down, flattened out and flew ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... the opposite side of the earth. From both these causes it is easy to comprehend that the water will rise on two sides of the earth, viz. on that nearest to the moon, and its opposite side, and that it will be flattened in consequence at the quadratures, and thus produce two tides in every lunar day, which consists of about twenty- four hours and ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... long oval of four hundred metres (east-west), by a maximum of one hundred and eighty (north-south); but it extends branches in all directions: the mineral was also found in a rounded piton, a knob on the Wady Musayr, attached to the north-eastern side. The flattened dome is from fifty to sixty feet high, and the piton one hundred and forty. The metal underlying a dark crust, some twelve to fifteen centimetres thick, appears in regular crystals and amorphous fragments of pure ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... and what they see Over the bank, and what the children tell. The path, winding like silver, trickles on, Bordered and even invaded by thinnest moss That tries to cover roots and crumbling chalk With gold, olive, and emerald, but in vain. The children wear it. They have flattened the bank On top, and silvered it between the moss With the current of their feet, year after year. But the road is houseless, and leads not to school. To see a child is rare there, and the eye Has but the ...
— Poems • Edward Thomas
... far as its means allow. A famous matador is as well paid as in England a Cabinet Minister or a music-hall artiste. This is his costume: a broad-brimmed hat with a low crown, which is something like a topper absurdly flattened down, with brims preposterously broadened out. The front of his shirt is befrilled and embroidered, and his studs are the largest diamonds; not even financiers in England wear such important stones. He wears a low collar without a necktie, but ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... divination is a science too. Physics is no longer materialistic since space is now curved, and filled with an ether through which light travels at 300,000 kilometres per second—an immaterial rate: because if anything material ventured to move at that forbidden speed, it would be so flattened that it would cease to exist. Indeed, matter is now hardly needed at all; its place has been taken by radio-activity, and by electrons which dart and whirl with such miraculous swiftness, that occasionally, for no known reason, they can skip ...
— Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy - Five Essays • George Santayana
... size of a cat; that is, it is twenty-one inches long, of which the tail is ten inches. In color it somewhat resembles the beaver, but its feet are not conspicuously webbed, its tail is long and flattened vertically, not {137} horizontally. This abundant animal is found throughout North America within the limit of trees wherever there is fresh water. It is the most abundant ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America
... "sea-cucumber," or BCHE-DE-MER, family is especially noticeable because it is decorated with colours of which a gaily plumaged bird might be envious, though it has no other claim to comeliness. Most primitive in form—merely a flattened sac, oval and four inches long by three inches broad, with a purple and white mouth puckered as if contracted by a drawn string. Its general tint is grey; longitudinal bands of scarlet, green, violet, and purple radiate from the posterior and converge at the mouth, the hues blending ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... stocked with all kinds of fish of the sea except the whale and the shark." Here "the sugar cane grew until it lay flat, the hogs until the tusks were long, the chickens until the spurs were long and sharp, and the dogs until their backs were flattened out." They leave Paliuli to travel over Hawaii, and "no man ...
— The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai • Anonymous
... few threads and some small leaves joined together, the Crab Spider builds, above her lofty nest, a rudimentary watch-tower where she stays permanently, greatly emaciated, flattened into a sort of wrinkled shell through the emptying of her ovaries and the total absence of food. And this mere shred, hardly more than a skin that persists in living without eating, stoutly defends her egg-sack, shows ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre |
