"Float" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... came safe, and welcome, too, As anything must be from you; A meerschaum pure, 'twould float as light As she the girls called Amphitrite. Mixture divine of foam and clay, From both it stole the best away: Its foam is such as crowns the glow Of beakers brimmed by Veuve Clicquot; Its clay is but congested ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various
... buried me, but I wanted you to know that you ordered me to be killed without any investigation of my fault. Your wife stole my boy, and, as you saw, she put a cat by my side." The ghost vanished, and the king saw the body float away again down the river. The king at once ordered the body of his favorite to be taken out of the water and brought to the palace; and he himself was driven back to the town, violent with rage and remorse. There ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... being a weighty affair, would easily be knocked off, or might drop away from the body as it floated in water in a state of decomposition. The jaw would thus be deposited immediately, while the rest of the body would float and drift away altogether, ultimately reaching the sea, and perhaps becoming destroyed. The jaw becomes covered up and preserved in the river silt, and thus it comes that we have such a curious circumstance as that of the lower jaws in the Stonesfield ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... seen on the other side; now catkin, bud, and opening leaf have thickened and check the view. The same effect was produced not long since by the rime on the branches in the frosty mornings; while each smallest twig was thus lined with crystal it was not possible to see through. Tangled weeds float down the brook, catching against projecting branches that dip into the stream, or slowly rotating and carried apparently up the current by the eddy and back-water behind the bridge. In the pond the frogs have congregated in great numbers; their constant ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... northern end of Moon Lake, a crescent-shaped sheet of water, probably an old bed of the Mississippi. The lake is seven or eight miles long and from eight hundred to a thousand yards wide, with a uniform depth enough to float the largest steamboats. Two or three plantations were then on the east shore, but the rest was unbroken forest, quiet and isolated, abounding in game as the waters did in fish. The pass issues again half way down the eastern side, through an opening so shut in with trees that it can scarcely be seen ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan
... Harbor Cousin Giles took us out. It's funny that they don't float off. Do they go 'way down to the bottom of ...
— A Little Girl in Old Salem • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... the huts, have won for the beaver a reputation [Page 178] for engineering skill which the creature truly deserves. In constructing these ingenious dams the beavers, by the aid of their powerful teeth, gnaw down trees sometimes of large size, and after cutting them into smaller pieces float them on the water to the spot selected for the embankment. In swift streams this embankment is built so as to arch against the current, thus securing additional strength, and evincing an instinct on the part of the animal which amounts almost to reason. In cutting ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... way before them. Wooden mills, thatched roofs, great mill-wheels, went dipping and swaying and hobbling down. From the upper windows of the Mains, looking towards the chief current, they saw a drift of everything belonging to farms and dwelling-houses that would float. Chairs and tables, chests, carts, saddles, chests of drawers, tubs of linen, beds and blankets, workbenches, harrows, girnels, planes, cheeses, churns, spinning-wheels, cradles, iron pots, wheel-barrows—all ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... my health, the war for Independence was won. I pray God that time may soften the bitterness it caused, and heal the breach in that noble race whose motto is Freedom. That the Stars and Stripes and the Union Jack may one day float together to ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... generally in the midst of large companies, where he is the image of power and activity. His eloquence is unimpaired; perhaps it is softer and stronger. His will is less than ever commensurate with his ability. Brilliant images of greatness float upon his mind, like images of the morning clouds on the waters. Their forms are changed by the motion of the waves, they are agitated by every breeze, and modified by every sun-beam. He talked in the course of an hour, of beginning three works; and he recited ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... thus preparing our designs, and had first, by main strength, heaved the boat upon the beach so high that the tide would not float her off at high-water mark, and besides had broke a hole in her bottom too big to be quickly stopped, and were set down musing what we should do, we heard the ship fire a gun, and make a waft with her ensign as a signal for the boat to come on board-but no boat stirred; and they ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... portion which I have called the gap by the sea, otherwise the Isonzo front. From a mound behind the trenches an extraordinary fine view can be got of the Austrian position, the general curve of both lines being marked, as in Flanders, by the sausage balloons which float behind them. The Isonzo, which has been so bravely carried by the Italians, lay in front of me, a clear blue river, as broad as the Thames at Hampton Court. In a hollow to my left were the roofs of Gorizia, the town which the Italians are endeavouring to take. A long desolate ...
— A Visit to Three Fronts • Arthur Conan Doyle
... enemies are discomfited. Jerusalem is fallen; and our banners Float from her battlements, and o'er her gates Nicanor's severed head, a sign of terror, Blackens ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... his devotion to the art of painting. Indeed, from that time forth, he would spend the best part of the day in the front balcony, like the attentive angler poring on his float; and the better to support the tedium, he would frequently console himself with his clay pipe. On several occasions passers-by appeared to be arrested by the ticket, and on several others ladies and gentlemen drove to the very doorstep by ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... this disease originates in two principal causes, viz., First, The inhalation of lamp smoke with the carbonic acid gas[3] generated in the pit, and that expired from the lungs; Second, Carbon, and the carburetted gases which float in the heated air after the ever-recurring explosions of gunpowder, which the occurrence ...
— An Investigation into the Nature of Black Phthisis • Archibald Makellar
... Alessandro hesitated, in regret that he had gone so far with this adventure. He had heard fearful tales of dark deeds committed on the waters of the Bosporus and the Golden Horn; and he himself, when roving during his leisure hours along the verdant banks of those waters, had seen the livid corpse float with the tale-telling bow-string fastened ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... nettled; nettled; nettled by the contretemps that had occurred on the very last day, when Mrs. Bilton was so nearly there; nettled and exasperated. So immensely did he want the twins to be happy, to float serenely in the unclouded sunshine and sweetness he felt was their due, that he was furious with them for doing anything to make it difficult. And, jerkily, his angry thoughts pounced, as they so often ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... hardly ever breaking into an air, and yet so beautiful! There the notes merely served to lift the words, to impregnate them with more terrible and subtle meaning; and the subdued harmonies enfolded them in an atmosphere, a sensual mood; and in this music we sink into depths of soul and float upon sullen and mysterious tides of life—those which roll beneath the phase of life which we call existence. But the vulgarly vaunted Good Friday music did not deceive him; at the second or third time of hearing he had perceived its insincerity. It was very beautiful music, but in such a situation ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... stepped into the water that moved sluggishly as yet across the farm road which ran to Sidney's front door from the raised and metalled public road. It was half way up to his knees when he knocked. As he looked back Miss Sperrit's lantern seemed to float in mid-ocean. ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... derives her light from the sun, and that this fact explains her phases; that an eclipse of the moon happens when the earth cuts off the sun's light from her. He supposed the earth to be flat, and to float upon water. He determined the ratio of the sun's diameter to its orbit, and apparently made out the diameter correctly as half a degree. ...
— History of Astronomy • George Forbes
... through the narrow street, led by the veiled woman. His impressions were growing dim; and now she seemed less real than hitherto. The streets were phantom streets, built of shadow stuff, and the stairs which presently he found himself ascending, were unsubstantial, and he seemed rather to float upward; until, with the jewelled fingers held fast in his own, he stood in a darkened apartment, and saw before him an open window, knew that he was once more back in the hotel. A dim light dawned in the blackness of the room ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer
... which they had so often been confined and pestered with wearisome tasks and studies, the passages they had played in, the walls which had always been kept so carefully clean, all falling before the mason's hatchet and the carpenter's axe,—and that from the bottom upwards; to float as it were in the air, propped up by beams, being, at the same time, constantly confined to a certain lesson or definite task,—all this produced a commotion in our young heads that was not easily settled. But the young people felt ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... put the Staff into a trench, and that is enough. One General only and his Staff. They come to the palace. They say 'In the name of the Republic, so that the world may be safe for democracy—' and then—! There is a rope. There is a flag staff. I float in the air. They cheer. I am dead. I know it. But it ...
— Lady Bountiful - 1922 • George A. Birmingham
... kept me a slave. So I concluded either to quit work or quit gambling. I studied the matter over a long time. At last one day while we were finishing a boat that we had calked, and were working on a float aft of the wheel, I gave my tools a push with my foot, and they all went into the river. My brother called out and asked me what I was doing. I looked up, a little sheepish, and said it was the last lick of work I would ...
— Forty Years a Gambler on the Mississippi • George H. Devol
... can be but little doubt that our best policy would be to discontinue the building of ships of the first and second class, and look rather to the possession of ample materials, prepared for the emergencies of war, than to the number of vessels which we can float in a season of peace, as the index of our naval power. Judicious deposits in navy yards of timber and other materials, fashioned under the hands of skillful work-men and fitted for prompt application to their various purposes, would enable us at all times to construct ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... whatever political views their lords might choose to adopt. Yet the fact that an old patrician was not in sympathy with the Crown was by no means an assurance of loyalty to Carlotta; it might simply mean that he was waiting to select one from among the many banners that were eager to float over his happy island of Cyprus—or that a more fervent hope possessed him of gathering to his own standard the various malcontents and of wearing, with true Cyprian magnificence, the royal honors that he craved;—as ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... him to sit down, and squeeze him between them with a savage little laugh that seems to mean: "What are we going to do to him?" Extract money from him, as much of it as possible. It must be had in order to float the Caisse Territorial, which has been aground for years, buried in sand to her masthead. A magnificent operation, this of floating her again, if we are to believe these two gentlemen; for the buried craft ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... talk to you, and sing your songs; she will take care of you, and pray for you, and cry when you go to the war; if she is not your daughter or your sister, she will, perhaps, in a moment of weakness or insanity, marry you; she will be a faithful wife, and float you to the end; but if you wish to be her love, her hero, her ideal, her delight, her spontaneity, her utter rest and ultimatum, you must attune your soul to fine issues,—you must bring out the angel in you, and keep the brute ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... love!—more like an out-of-tune Worn viol, a good singer would be wroth To spoil his song with, and which, snatched in haste, Is laid down at the first ill-sounding note. I did not wrong myself so, but I placed A wrong on thee. For perfect strains may float 'Neath master-hands, from instruments defaced,— And great souls, at one stroke, ...
— The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... its cordage, and spreading a single sheet of canvas, that, in itself, was sufficient to drive the fabric with vast velocity through the water. The hull was low, graceful in its outlines, dark as the raven's wing, and so modelled as to float on its element like a sea-gull riding the billows. There were many delicate and attenuated lines among its spars, which were intended to spread broader folds of canvas to the light airs, when necessary; but these additions to the tracery of the machine, which added ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... not water enough to float her till half-past seven, they were saying. Here's the lil one's nightdress, and here's her binder, bless her—just big enough for a bandage for a person's wrist ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... mystery that I never could fathom; surely if men would only agree to give up going to sea altogether, and never build any more ships, there would be no more drowning, and no need of lifeboats and cork boots—or coats, I forget which—that enable them to walk on the water, or float in it, I don't remember which. I'm sure with all that I have to remember it's no wonder—what with ridiculous little trifles to worry one, such as keys, and thimbles, and scissors, when we should be giving our minds to ...
— Shifting Winds - A Tough Yarn • R.M. Ballantyne
... that the Admiralty bought two machines and established the first Naval Flying School at that place. The same year Commander O. Swann purchased from Messrs. A. V. Roe a 35 horse-power biplane and began to carry out experiments with different types of floats, as a result of which a twin-float seaplane was produced—the first to rise off the ...
— Aviation in Peace and War • Sir Frederick Hugh Sykes
... all the patience of a veteran angler. I knew the water to be very deep, and it lay in a sheltered nook or corner of the rocks about ten feet across; I allowed the line to drop some three or four yards, and not having any float, could only tell I had a bite by feeling a pull at the line, which was ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Marryat
... pure-hearted, and amiable De Vayne should be made the butt of the machinations of such men as Bruce and Brogten! But so it was. So it was; I could not invent facts like these. They never could float across my imagination, or if they did, I should reject them as the monstrous chimeras of a heated brain. I can conceive a man's private wickedness,—the wickedness which he confines within his own ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... my own most urrgent. But, Mr. Paricles has got her at last. That's certain. Gall'ns of tears has poor Mr. Braintop cried over it, bein' one of the mew-in-a-corner sort of young men, ye know, what never win the garl, but cry enough to float her and the lucky fella too, and off they go, and ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... conceived for his master a superstitious feeling that was a mixture of terror, admiration, and selfishness. The laboratory was to him what a lottery-office is to the masses,—organized hope. Every night he went to bed saying to himself, "To-morrow we may float in gold"; and every morning he woke with a faith as firm as that of ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac
... fifty pounds when she flew in for the visit. At the end of six months she strained the scales at two hundred and twenty. There was a good deal of horse-sense in his contention that if all this additional weight was country air, she'd have to be pretty securely anchored or she'd float away like a balloon. ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... of discordant sounds began to float up from the village on the gentle southerly breeze. There was a weird, unearthly groaning, as of a monster in pain, mingled with the beating of tin-pans. Perez finally went to see what it was. At the end of the lane he met Peleg Bidwell, ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... brought under British dominion. Lady Brassey's narrative of her Mediterranean cruises and Oriental experiences has the distinctive merits of her former work—the same unpretending simplicity and clearness of style, the same quick appreciation of things that float upon the surface; but it necessarily lacks its interest and special value. It goes over familiar—nay, over hackneyed—ground, and thus inevitably comes into comparison with the works of preceding travellers, ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... fertility and beauty. Between Benghazi, in east longitude 20 deg., and the Ras al Tynn (long. 23 deg. 15'), there rises above the level of the adjacent regions an extensive table land, which, attracting the vapors that float over the Mediterranean, condenses them, and so abounds with springs and rills. A general freshness and greenness, with rich vegetation in places, is the consequence. Olives, figs, carobs, junipers, ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... knows that this sum of all knowledge never saved him from whipping; mere years help nothing; King and Hay and Adams could neither of them escape floundering through the corridors of chaos that opened as they passed to the end; but they could at least float with the stream if they only knew which way the current ran. Adams would have liked to begin afresh with the Limulus and Lepidosteus in the waters of Braintree, side by side with Adamses and Quincys ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... a jugful! Think I'd take any pay of you? No, sir-ee! I'd set right here on this float an' watch your bo't for a week 'thout eatin' or sleepin', an' never charge you a cent! I never 'spected to live to see Frank Merriwell! Oh, Jingoes! won't the fellers ...
— Frank Merriwell's Cruise • Burt L. Standish
... was again in the old quarry, staring into the deep well. I thought Mrs Oldcastle was murdering her daughter in the house above, while I was spell-bound to the spot, where, if I stood long enough, I should see her body float into the well from the subterranean passage, the opening of which was just below where I stood. I was thus confusing and reconstructing the two dreadful stories of the place—that told me by old Weir, about the circumstances of his birth; and that told me by Dr Duncan, about Mrs Oldcastle's treatment ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... sweetly did they float upon the wings Of silence through the empty-vaulted night, At every fall smoothing the raven down Of darkness ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... calmly die As waves on quiet shores when winds are low. Fields, lonely paths, the one small glimmering rill That twinkles like a wood-fay's mirthful eye, Under moist bay-leaves, clouds fantastical That float and change at the light breeze's will,— To me, thus lapped in sylvan luxury, Are more than death of kings, or ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... case, the ether, whether solid or fluid or granular, remains the fundamental reality. The universe does not float IN an ocean of ether: it IS an ocean of ether. But countless myriads of minute disturbances are found in this ocean, and set it quivering with the various pulses which we classify as forces or energies. These points of disturbance cluster together in systems (atoms) of from 1000 to 250,000 members, ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe
... skeins of finest silk and began to weave. And she wove a web of marvelous beauty, so thin and light that it would float in the air, and yet so strong that it could hold a lion in its meshes; and the threads of warp and woof were of many colors, so beautifully arranged and mingled one with another that all who saw were filled ...
— Old Greek Stories • James Baldwin
... with the owner's registered mark and rolled upon the ice of lake or river, to await the natural transport of spring. Once the ice thaws the forests begin to move, for as "Birnam Wood marched to Dunsinane," the Finnish forests float to ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... the face of light Float the clouds of sullen Night! Odin's warriors watch for me By the earth-encircling sea! The water's dirges howl my knell; ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... simultaneously become two sources of confusion. In the university only the student of tried worth is permitted to take a seminar course. In the upper classes in college, mediocre students are often welcomed into a seminar course in order to help float ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... prairie, carpeted with velvet flowers; on the blue and dreamy sea—it is the same. I look around, and perceive men and women moving mechanically about me; I even take part in their proceedings, and seem to float along the tardy current upon which they swim, and become a part—an insignificant portion—of the dull and stagnant scene; and yet, often and often, in the busiest moment, when commonplace has its strongest hold upon me, and I feel actually interested in the ordinary pursuits of my fellow-beings, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... pace with the demand for homes. As we pass these tents, we are rude enough to look in. Most of them are furnished with telephones and the city water; here a bride bends over a chafing dish; another glance discloses an oil-painting that was once shown in the Royal Academy. From the next tent float the strains of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, and, as we stop to listen, a gentleman and his wife step out. An auto picks them up and off they whirl to Jasper Avenue. The Lord o' the Tents of Shem disappears into his bank and Milady drives on to the Government ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... thy pool: looking into which, thou shalt see thy own reflection, and rejoice. Or, if thou wilt, I will play the river, and thou shalt be the silver swan that floats upon its breast. What! wilt thou take from the river all its beauty, by refusing to float upon the water that only longs to be adorned by so beautiful a burden? Or better still, thou shalt be my mango blossom, and I, thy mad black bee, living only to plunder my shy sweet blossom of its intoxicating wine; aye, without thee, ...
— Bubbles of the Foam • Unknown
... proved more interesting and amusing than the study of the past. Quincy Livingstone's strictures on the exiles of Erin stirred them to the depths, and his refusal to float the green flag from the city hall brought a blossoming of green ribbon on St. Patrick's Day which only Spring could surpass in her decorations of the hills. The merchants blessed the sour spirit which had provoked ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... the seat cushions. It is twenty-one feet in length and has a five-and-a-half-foot beam, the design being what is known as a compromise stern. The motor is a double-cylinder two-cycle one, of ten horsepower. It has a float-feed carburetor, mechanical oiler, and the ignition system is the jump-spark—the best for this style of motor. The boat will make ten miles an hour, with twelve in, and, of course, more than that with a lighter load. A good deal will depend ...
— Tom Swift and his Motor-boat - or, The Rivals of Lake Carlopa • Victor Appleton
... watchful mother stoops O'er her infant's cradled rest, So my trembling spirit droops O'er this long-closed, silent breast. Speak! I touch the lyre's sweet strings, Feebly, plaintively it sings, With thy voice set free at last. While athwart a radiant beam, Like a light, enchanted dream, Float ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... considerable body of troops was expected from Canada, on its way to Ticonderoga; and this force in fact reached St. John's on the next day. When it arrived, Arnold was gone, having carried off a sloop which he found there and destroyed everything else that could float. By such trifling means two active officers had secured the temporary control of the lake itself and of the approaches to it from the south. There being no roads, the British, debarred from the water line, were unable to ...
— The Major Operations of the Navies in the War of American Independence • A. T. Mahan
... of the Muscovite Great Prince would suit a poor adventurer; abundance of such men might be found at that time possessed of talents and learning. But hardly was Aristotle's letter communicated to Antony, than visions began to float in his ardent brain.—'To Muscovy!' cried the voice of destiny—'To Muscovy!' echoed through his soul, like a cry remembered from infancy. That soul, in its fairest dreams, had long pined for a new, distant, unknown land and people: Antony wished to be ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... as the camel slowly and majestically entered the compound gate, and saw her clearly framed in the soft silver light; all this wondrous beauty round them seemed to be to her beauty but as the harmonies that in an opera float round the central air. And she smiled ...
— Six Women • Victoria Cross
... yellow sandbags of their trench, When something threw me sideways with a wrench, And the skies seemed to shrivel like a scroll And disappear... and propped against the bole Of a big elm I lay, and watched the clouds Float through the blue, deep sky in speckless crowds, And I was clean again, and young, ...
— Young Adventure - A Book of Poems • Stephen Vincent Benet
... he'd never send his family to a Graymouse school. He said that Uncle Squeaky's band couldn't play as good as the Frog Orchestra, and that Uncle Squeaky didn't know anything about the Lake, if he did make a raft and float around. Ah, Grandpa Bull Frog thinks he is ...
— Grand-Daddy Whiskers, M.D. • Nellie M. Leonard
... about her baby and tried once more to persuade herself into accepting the shelter of the workhouse. It seemed strange even to her that a pale, glassy moon should float high up in the sky, and that she should suffer; and then she looked at the lights that fell like golden daggers from the Surrey shore into the river. What had she done to deserve the workhouse? Above all, what had the poor, innocent child done to deserve it? ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore
... suffering and making others suffer, his aggressive and revengeful anguish had lost its edge, like a blunted sword. He scarcely had the heart left in him to owe any one or anything a grudge; he let his rebellious wrath float away down stream, as his life must. He was so weary of wrestling, weary of fighting, weary of hating, weary of everything, that he was quite worn out; and tried to stupefy his heart with forgetfulness ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... But for your husband, He's noble, wise, judicious, and best knows The fits o'th'time, I dare not speak much further, But cruel are the times when we are traitors, And do not know't ourselves, when we (a)hold rumour From what we fear, yet know not what we fear; But float upon a wild and violent sea, Each way, and (b)move. I'll take my leave of you: Shall not be long but I'll be here again: Things at the worst will cease, or else climb upward To what they were before: my pretty cousin, Blessing ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... they had reached a clearer understanding of each other. It was as if, after a swim through bright opposing waves, with a dazzle of sun in their eyes, they had gained an inlet in the shades of a cliff, where they could float on the still surface and gaze ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... beyond a question, had been driven up on a sea during the late gale, at a point where the water was of sufficient depth to float her, until within a few yards of the very spot where she now lay; Captain Truck giving the following probable history of ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... most inactive woman when I am here," she said. "I think sometimes I was born to live and do nothing, nothing, nothing but float about, as we fancy we do sometimes in dreams. But that cannot be really my destiny, and I must struggle against ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... They float into the ward bearing the sense of heat and dust, and of the bumping of the saddle. The dairyman has perhaps put me a bit against ...
— A Diary Without Dates • Enid Bagnold
... from it the way in which it is used? People usually suppose, either that a bird flies because it is lighter than the air, like a balloon, or that it rows itself along as a boat is rowed through the water. Neither of these suppositions is true. A bird is not lighter than the air, and does not float; for when a bird is shot on the wing it falls to the ground just as quickly as a squirrel. On the contrary, a bird flies by its own weight, and could not fly at all if it were not heavier than ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, September 1878, No. 11 • Various
... said, "with the liberal offers of Caesar; it is not far better to obtain without a combat the possession of gold, silver, silks, and all the objects of our desires? Are we sure of victory? Can we conclude a treaty with the sea? We do not tread on the land; we float on the abyss of water, and a common death hangs over our heads." [65] The memory of these Arctic fleets that seemed to descend from the polar circle left deep impression of terror on the Imperial city. By the vulgar of every rank, it was asserted ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... enough how convincingly the stage entrance of that theater was for Paul the actual portal of Romance. Certainly none of the company ever suspected it, least of all Charley Edwards. It was very like the old stories that used to float about London of fabulously rich Jews, who had subterranean halls there, with palms, and fountains, and soft lamps and richly appareled women who never saw the disenchanting light of London day. So, in the midst of that smoke-palled ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... saint by temperament, it seemed, and would be a saint by temperament to the end. He had not been scourged to a prayerful attitude by sorrow or by pain. Tears had not made a sea to float him to repentance or to purity. Apparently he had been given what men call goodness as others are given moustaches or a cheerful temper. When his contemporaries wondered at him, he often found himself wondering still more at them. Why did they love coarse sins? he thought. Why did ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... for some time, right out in the middle, to float without moving, while Mercer and Hodson in turn had their tries. Burr major was swimming from side to side, blowing like a grampus, and other boys were about us unnoticed, for we were too much occupied over our own efforts to heed them, when all at once, as I lay back with the water nearly ...
— Burr Junior • G. Manville Fenn
... I see Thy white hands beckon to the garden, where Dim day and silvery darkness are inwrought As our two lives, where, joining soul with soul, The tints shall mingle in a fairer whole. Oh! dost thou hear? I call, beloved, I call, My stout heart trembling till thy words return; Hope-lifted, I float faster with the fall Of fear toward joy such fear alone ...
— Along the Shore • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... Promptitude, prudence, skill, and struggle with the waves, saved the whole two hundred and seventy-six souls in that battered ship; yet it was God who saved them all. Whether Paul was among the party that could swim, or among the more helpless who had to cling to anything that would float, he was held up by God's hand, and it was He who 'sent from above, took him, and drew him out ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... primitive device to the screw propeller came it was a veritable leap in naval architecture. Now revolutions in any direction seldom receive a welcome and just as the conservatives had at first hooted down the idea of iron ships, asserting they would never float, so they now decried the use of the screw propeller. Indeed there was no denying that this innovation presented to shipbuilders a multitude of new and balking problems. While the clipper ships had greatly improved the designs of vessels the stern was still their weakest point and now, ...
— Steve and the Steam Engine • Sara Ware Bassett
... hesitates to destroy an illusion, no matter how pernicious, that is so delightful while it lasts. These are the rare moments of life. To be young and ardent, in the midst of an Italian spring, and to believe in the moral perfection of a beautiful woman—what an admirable situation! Float with the current; I'll stand on the brink ...
— The Diary of a Man of Fifty • Henry James
... foresaw would give. The war came and the opportunity; but came too late for them. They can look for nothing but the dull duties of the base. They do them, enduring minor hardships, facing ceaseless worries, going calmly on, while the great stream of war on which they hoped to float moves on, leaving them behind. With them are others, younger men, who have seen some fighting, have been wounded or broken in health. Often they have struggled hard to secure the posts they hold. They might ...
— A Padre in France • George A. Birmingham
... back toward the sanatorium. The rain was over, but a heavy fog had rolled in, so that the doctor's little car seemed to float in a sea of cloud. Now and then another car passed him, specter-like amid the grayness. Silent figures, magnified by the mist, came and went like shadow pictures on a screen. From the far distance sounded ...
— Glory of Youth • Temple Bailey
... I find a magic bark; I leap on board: no helmsman steers: I float till all is dark. 40 A gentle sound, an awful light! Three angels bear the Holy Grail; With folded feet, in stoles of white, On sleeping wings they sail. Ah, blessed vision! blood of God! 45 My spirit beats her mortal bars, ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... our pleasure-boats had, but water-ballast in breakers, which now proved no additional burthen to the boat. It was also fortunate that she was built partly of deal, and had only her lower streaks of jarra wood, which does not float. ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... should be granted to the intercession of his king rather than to any other consideration; and therefore once, twice, thrice, he had interviews with Elizabeth, and still he would not take the anxious suppliant, who was in an agony at each disappointment, as she watched the gay barge float down the river, and who began to devise setting forth alone, to seek the Queen at Richmond and end it all! She would have done so, but that Diccon told her that since the alarm caused by Barnwell, it had become so much more difficult to approach ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... orchard is like a small frozen sea now; and that is the present scene of our heroic games. Sometimes, in the splendor of the dying light, we seem sporting upon transparent gold, so prismatic becomes the ice; and the snow takes opaline hues from the gems that float above as clouds. It is eminently the hour to see objects, just after the sun has disappeared. Oh, such oxygen as we inhale! After other skaters appear,—young men and boys,—who principally interest me as ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... this the most ornamental of all native milkweeds set dry fields ablaze with color. Above them butterflies hover, float, alight, sip, and sail away—the great dark, velvety, pipe-vine swallow-tail (Papilio philenor), its green-shaded hind wings marked with little white half moons; the yellow and brown, common, Eastern swallow-tail (P. asterias), that we saw about the wild parsnip and other ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... on The Prude all will be attended to with due discrimination in apportionment of censure. At present the spirit of the dance makes merry with my pen, for from yonder "stately pleasure-dome" (decreed by one Kubla Khan, formerly of The Big Bonanza Mining Company) the strains of the Blue Danube float out upon the night. Avaunt, miscreants! lest we chase ye with flying feet and do our little dance upon your unwholesome carcasses. Already the toes of our partners begin to twiddle beneath their petticoats. ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... uses to which the India berries (Cocas de Levante) are put in the Philippines, is to throw them into small sluggish streams or into lakes with the object of intoxicating the fish which soon come to the surface and float there as if dead. This custom is very extensive in Malaysia, in India and even in Europe, where, in order to avoid the cases of poisoning which this practice has occasioned in the consumers of fish ...
— The Medicinal Plants of the Philippines • T. H. Pardo de Tavera
... got out of his wagon and gathered together a handful of rocks, which he threw at the object. Some of the stones appeared to go through it, but did not seem to affect it in the least. It still continued to float along at a short distance away until Stephens became frightened and whipped up his horses until they flew at a two-minute gait down the road, the object following at some distance until quite away from the scene of its first appearance, when it disappeared like a cloud of ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... a very neat man and sometimes for several days he forgot to shave. With a long lean hand he stroked his half grown beard. His illness had struck deeper than he had admitted even to himself and his mind had an inclination to float out of his body. Often when he sat thus his hands lay in his lap and he looked at them with a child's absorption. It seemed to him they must belong to someone else. He grew philosophic. "It's an odd thing about my body. ...
— Triumph of the Egg and Other Stories • Sherwood Anderson
... do the English excel. It was a comrade, bending over the house, strength and adventure in its roots, but in its utmost fingers tenderness, and the girth, that a dozen men could not have spanned, became in the end evanescent, till pale bud clusters seemed to float in the air. It was a comrade. House and tree transcended any similes of sex. Margaret thought of them now, and was to think of them through many a windy night and London day, but to compare either to man, to woman, always dwarfed ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... of from one to two hundred thousand people. But, oh, lovely beyond power of language to describe!—past all conception, and comparable alone with fancies such as float through the brain of poet-lover as he lies dreaming of his soul's desire. I draw my conclusions from Peters' state of mind when he attempts to describe this strange city, rather than from what he says; ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... over it for duck stunts and if the water wasn't so infernally still, I'd be floating and smoking and likely in time I'd make shore. That's a delightful pastime for you now," he added with a lazy smile of the utmost good humor, "to float and smoke on a summer day and grab ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... waited to watch a little colored cloud float by, and then continued: "Isn't the real interest in life the ...
— Claire - The Blind Love of a Blind Hero, By a Blind Author • Leslie Burton Blades
... should be called death instead of berth, where the reek of the aforesaid putridities awakes him to breakfast without aid of gong,—propelled by a second-hand engine, whose every wheeze threatens the terrors of dissolution,—morally certain, that, if his floating sty from any cause ceases to float, there are not boats enough to save an eighth of the passengers,—he must admire the ocean with a true poet's enthusiasm, if he can brave ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... up her charge, as his so compromised "pride" yet in a manner prompted him, that he had enjoyed all the week all those elements of ease about her; the most he achieved for that was to declare, with an ingenuity contributing to float him no small distance further, that of course he had turned up at their old place of tryst, which had been, through the years, the haunt of his solitude and the goal of his walk any Sunday morning that seemed too beautiful for church; ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... so persistently, that we have not much farther to run if the signs that I see about me go for anything. Artillery, to the number of some eight or ten pieces, is now grinding our barricades to pieces and making our outworks more and more untenable. Rifle bullets float overhead in such swarms that by a comparison of notes I now estimate that there must be from five to six thousand infantry and dismounted cavalry ranged against us. Mines are being already run under so many parts of our ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... Mr. Long. "Must have air and plenty of it. You see I heat it up inside of me and use it later to sell my goods. A promoter, you know, must depend upon hot air because what he's selling won't float on cold air." ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders Among the Kentucky Mountaineers • Jessie Graham Flower
... that it shall never again glare with its baleful eyes, or brandish its venomous tongue. Let not the fate and fortunes of this glorious country be committed to the keeping of a clumsy, misshapen raft, compacted of twenty-four or thirty-four logs, good enough to float down a river, but sure to go to pieces when it gets into deep water; Let let them be embarked on board a goodly ship, well found, well fastened, well manned—in which every timber and plank has been so fashioned as to contribute ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... was in the box with cotton in ears. "You get into the box with the princess," he said to the ama. "I am a good swimmer and I am going to open the door and swim out. The box is made of wood that will float; so, inside of it, you and the princess ...
— Tales of Giants from Brazil • Elsie Spicer Eells
... must be placed in the basket, not too many at a time or too close together, and then lowered gently into the fat. They generally will sink to the bottom for a minute or two, and only float when they have begun to brown. When a bright golden brown, take up the basket and let the fried things drain in it, over the hot fat, for a few seconds. Then take them out gently one by one, and lay them on a sheet of ...
— The Story of Crisco • Marion Harris Neil
... felt that the strain of pulling not only him but the spar through the water might be too much for it, and rather than run the risk he again waved his hand, and as soon as the line slacked he fastened it to the rope from the wreck, loosened the hitches round the spar and allowed the latter to float away. He was half drowned by the time he reached the side of the bawley, for he had been dragged in the teeth of the wind and tide, and each wave had swept clean over ...
— A Chapter of Adventures • G. A. Henty
... us float about. I am sure it is cold in there. I am so glad to see you again." As her hands were occupied, he took the seat in the stern at once, and she pulled out a few yards, then crossed ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... happened long, long ago; and it seems now as if the tide had set in, which is going to float it back to its old ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 20, March 25, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... most implicit confidence by all on board, as the only guide to safety. The same Wisdom is displayed thro out all creation; in the beauty, order, and harmony of the universe; in the planets which float in the azure vault of heaven; in the glow worm that glitters in the dust; in the fish which cuts the liquid element; in the pearl which sparkles in the bottom of the ocean; in every thing that lives, ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... discover her richest treasures. The Sun of righteousness, and the star of peace shall break upon her sin-clouded vision, and smile upon her renewed households The anthem of the Redeemer's advent shall float through her forests, and be echoed by her mountains. Those dusky children of the desert, who now wander and plunder, will settle to quiet occupations of industry. Gathering themselves into villages, plying the labors of handicraft and agriculture, they ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... air with the bow, as if to recall a former touch and tune. A satisfied look shot up in his face, and then with an almost impossible softness he drew the bow across the strings, getting a distant delicate note, which seemed to float and tenderly multiply upon itself—a variation, indeed, of the tune which De Casson had played. A rapt look came into his eyes. And all that look behind the general look of his face—the look which has to do with a man's past or future—deepened and spread, till ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Gerrard; but without knowing in what direction to steer we might too probably float about till we were starved to death, or overtaken by another hurricane," answered ...
— Paul Gerrard - The Cabin Boy • W.H.G. Kingston
... I travel at night, hide in trees all day, float down at night in shadow of bushes, and have got through safe. Chief Hassan says not been able to come down. Other chiefs very angry because English warship come. Send message to Hassan to join them. When he say no, they threaten to kill him and destroy tribe when warship go away. Two of ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty
... around those fires than elsewhere. Dimly reflected in the river, the stars seemed to be absolutely motionless, whereas the trailing, golden reproductions of the steamer's lights never ceased to quiver, as though striving to break adrift, and float away into the obscurity. Meanwhile, foam like tissue paper was licking our dark hull, while at our stern, and sometimes overtaking it, there trailed a barge with a couple of lanterns in her prow, and a third on ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... striking grandeur in the sea that I never beheld so plainly before. There is something sublimely cheerful about the ocean, altho' it is so stored with woe, and so constantly suggestive it is of that ocean, life, whereon we all float. ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke
... trapping in that country for two or three years, and by that time the party had made up their minds they would start back to the States, across the mountains. They were headed for the Missouri River, and when they got there, they intended to build a boat and float down to St. Louis. As they were coming across the Continental Divide of the Rocky Mountains, had reached the eastern slope, and were coming down one of the tributaries of the Stinking Water, some one of the party discovered what he thought to be gold nuggets in the bed of the stream. ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... equally natural; but, as the Bishop of London has well remarked, 'When laborious ingenuity has exerted itself to collect a whole store of such difficulties, supposing them to be real, what on earth does it signify? They may be left quietly to float away without our being able to solve them, if we bear in mind the acknowledged fact, that there is a human element ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... Float out from the harbour and highland That hides all the region I know, Let me look a last time on the island Well seen from the sea to the snow. The lines of the ranges I follow, I travel the hills with my eyes, For I know where they make a deep hollow, A valley of ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker
... mother and I returned from a row, we would often see the children waiting for us, running like sand-spiders along the beach. They always liked to swim in company with a grown-up of buoyant temperament and inventive mind, and the float offered limitless opportunities for enjoyment while bathing. All dutiful parents know the game of "stage-coach"; each child is given a name, such as the whip, the nigh leader, the off wheeler, the old lady passenger, and, under penalty of paying a forfeit, ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... now forms the slightly elevated ground upon which Wykeham Abbey stands. The Norse word Wyke or Vik means a creek or bay, and the fact that such a name was given to this spot would suggest that the Vale was more than marshy in Danish times, and perhaps it even contained enough water to float shallow draught boats. Flotmanby is another suggestive name occurring at the eastern corner of the lake about four miles from Filey. In modern Danish flotman means a waterman or ferryman, and as ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home
... producing their violins and Mr Gaunt his flute, Mrs Gaunt or Miss Stanhope would open the piano which formed part of the saloon furniture, and the sounds of a very capital chamber concert would float out upon the evening air, to the great delectation of Captain Blyth, the officer of the watch, the helmsman, and—in a lesser degree, because less perfectly heard by them—the watch ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood
... joining in the recreation. Now the feet of her pony scattered the pebbles of the path, as the little troop of equestrians cantered beneath the shade of majestic elms. Now the prancing steeds draw them in the chariot, through the infinitely diversified drives, and the golden leaves of autumn float gracefully through the still air upon their heads. The boat, with damask cushions and silken awning, invites them upon the lake. The strong arms of the rowers bear them with fairy motion to sandy beach and jutting headland, ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... finally escaped, a more regular search was made, and it was discovered that a communication with the torrent on a former higher level had let the water pass underneath the castle, and turn a water wheel which cut up the bodies and made them float away by the outlet. Human skulls and bones were found, singularly verifying the ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... a man once gets his head under water, it is so hard to float back again on the surface. You see, I attribute all my embarrassments to that first concealment of my debts from my father, when they could have been so easily met, and when he came up to ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... Mix all well together into a smooth firm paste, then roll into balls about the size of a walnut, flour them over well, let them dry for half an hour, then drop them very carefully one by one into boiling stock and when they float on the top take them out with a perforated ladle, put them in a deep dish, dust them over with Parmesan and pour good meat or game ...
— The Cook's Decameron: A Study in Taste: - Containing Over Two Hundred Recipes For Italian Dishes • Mrs. W. G. Waters
... moment of leaving the "New York" an old catamaran had been thrown on the "Merrimac's" deck, as a possible aid to the crew in extremity. This float lay on the roof of the midship house, a rope fastening it to the taffrail, with enough slack to let it float loose after the ship had sunk. It was a fortunate thought for the crew, as it afforded them a temporary refuge in place of the ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume III • Charles Morris
... 1602 in a "small bark;" Martin Pring had done the same in 1603 in the bark Discovery, of 26 tons; Frobisher, in northern and dangerous coasts, in a vessel of 25 tons burden; and two of the vessels of Columbus were from 15 to 30 tons burden, and without decks on which to "float" the "engulfing floods" under which the Mayflower "staggered" so marvellously. All these vessels long preceded the Mayflower across the "unknown ocean;" but never inspired the lofty eloquence ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... Blackfriars Bridge. The Thames flowed dark and forbidden below. St. Paul's rose through the dim light imposing, its dome seeming to float above the buildings surrounding it. The figure of a child came upon the bridge and stood there for a moment peering about as if looking for some one. Several persons were crossing the bridge, but in one of the ...
— In His Steps • Charles M. Sheldon
... tail and snout, excavates a broad shallow "nest" in the gravelly bed of the stream, in rapid water, at a depth of one to four feet; the female deposits her eggs in it, and after the exclusion of the milt, they cover them with stones and gravel. They then float down the stream tail foremost. A great majority of them die. In the head-waters of the large streams all die, unquestionably. In the small streams, and near the sea, an unknown percentage probably survive. The young hatch in about sixty days, and most of them return ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 275 • Various |
