"Floating" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... With quick, nervous movements among his array of test-tubes, he turned a white solution to a wine color, and a light yellow solution to a dark brown. He dropped a piece of litmus paper into an acid, when it changed instantly to red, and on floating it in an alkali it ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London
... clouds against a blue sky can rarely be taken at all, or only under exceptional circumstances of illumination. The reason seems to be that there is very little light reflected at all from a thin wisp of cirrus, and what there is must pass through an atmosphere always more or less charged with floating particles of ice or water, besides earthy dust of all kinds. The light which is scattered and diffused by all these small particles is also concentrated on the sensitive plate by the lens, and the resulting negative shows ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 611, September 17, 1887 • Various
... eyes of those who look on the sculptor's finished work than before the eyes of Elizabeth appeared the shapes and hues of sounds which swept in gay or solemn procession through the windings of her father's horn, floating over the blue water, dissolving as the mist. No bright-winged bird, fair flower, or gorgeous sunset or sea-wave, was more distinct to the child's eyes than the hues of the same notes, stately as palm ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... ask the question here, though it might be very relevant on another occasion, whether this portraiture is a mere ideal, floating in vacuo, or whether it is a direct prophecy of that expected Messianic king who was to realise the divine ideal of sovereignty. At all events we know that, in its highest and deepest significance, the picture of my text has lived and breathed ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... invariably gets out her Bible. Used to them as I am, I find they can still touch me with awe. They make me lonesome. They seem like the search-lights of God, showing up my human littlenesses of soul. They are Armadas of floating glory reminding me there are seas I can never traverse. And the farther north one goes, of course, the ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... manhood's morning, and sworn to the service of their flag. How she wished Daddy Neil could hear it. Captain Pennell, into whose life during the past month had come some incentive to live, joined in the yell with a will, giving his cap a toss into the air when the echoes of it went floating out over the Severn, while Mrs. Harold and Polly waved their sweaters wildly, and yelled with ...
— Peggy Stewart: Navy Girl at Home • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... moustache again thinking of Freda in her floating yellow veil that he had called ridiculous. She had not been angry, he was nothing but a stable boy then. It was the way with those small intriguing women whose nostrils were made delicate through the pain of many generations ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... and fifty foot and thirty cavalry, all of whom embarked in sight of the Indians, and plied up and down the river with sails and oars; and the Indians were so astonished and intimidated by the sight of such huge floating machines, that they abandoned the opposite bank of the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... saw this strange object floating in the water near her home on the morning after the storm she recognized it as Maui's kite. Chuckling in vicious satisfaction at this chance opportunity to make trouble for the handsome son of Hina, Puuanuhe hid the kite in the rough hills back ...
— Legends of Wailuku • Charlotte Hapai
... rower, loaded with fetters and chains, In the gloom of her heart sings the proud vessel's dirge; Half forgets, in its wreck, all the pangs of her pains, As she sees its stout parts floating ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... lies between us. Bees that have hived in our grove go to seek honey in theirs. Flowers launched from their landing-stairs come floating by the stream where we bathe. Baskets of dried kusm flowers come from their fields to our market. The name of our village is Khanjanu0101, and Anjanu0101 they call our river. My name is known to all the village, and ...
— The Gardener • Rabindranath Tagore
... (being a Pagan). Groups of Pilgrims who have passed through Purgatory are ascending the mountain. Still farther to the left, and opening in unbroken splendor above the head of Beatrice, is seen the Heaven of Heavens. The golden light pours down on the heads of the Pilgrims, and angels are seen floating in the air and encouraging their efforts. The foreground of this part of the scene presents various objects to cheer the spirit of the Pilgrims in their passage through Purgatory. The entrance indeed is rocky, but shrubs and flowers adorn it, and the Dove, the bird of Hope, is bearing ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... of our soldiers who had been lying on the filthy floors of an adjacent building, with no food but army rations, were carried over, placed in clean cots, and given proper food. From that on, no distinction was made, the Red Cross flag floating over both the American and ...
— A Story of the Red Cross - Glimpses of Field Work • Clara Barton
... treasured by his mother, and going to Hiordis he begged these from her; and either he or Regin forged from them a blade so strong that it divided the great anvil in two without being dinted, and whose temper was such that it neatly severed some wool floating gently ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... no other obstacle lay in our way, and, floating gradually into a beautiful river, we soon lost sight of the sea, and were sailing up a spacious sheet of water, which became considerably wider after entering it; while majestic hills rose on each side, covered with verdure ...
— A Narrative of a Nine Months' Residence in New Zealand in 1827 • Augustus Earle
... the clouds. Watching keenly, I gradually began to picture to myself the sensation of walking unseen to the murderous fowl and suddenly clasping his smooth back with both hands. How startled he would be! But in truth the thought was only a continuation of another that had been floating through my mind while the hawk was wheeling. Unconsciously I had been mumbling to myself from ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various
... pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door; And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming, And the lamplight o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor, And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor Shall ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... "Sumter," was bought, equipped and put into commission at the end of April; and in the course of a few weeks she ran out of New Orleans, in command of Raphael Semmes, and the stars and bars were floating solitary, but defiant, over the seas. The history of her cruise, the terror she spread among the enemy's shipping, and the paralysis she sent to the very heart of his commerce, are too well known to need repetition here. Badly-built craft as she was ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... For she was a great line-of-battle ship, such as I had never yet seen, carrying seventy-four guns upon her three decks, which rose above the water like a huge wall, with the muzzles of the cannon plainly visible through the opening of her portholes. This majestic mass lay like a floating fortress upon the waves, and overhead her three masts towered up into the very clouds, with their yards set in order, and the ropes crossing from one to the other as intricate as a spider's web. Last of all, from a flagstaff on the stern, brandished the ensign of Great ...
— Athelstane Ford • Allen Upward
... issue these certificates, as he calls them—acknowledged to pressing debts of over five millions sterling which he could not pay; and to further debts of eight millions which he could not pay, but which he termed floating; debts, if I understand him, which were not as yet quite pressing. Now I imagine that to be a lamentable condition for any Chancellor of an Exchequer—especially as a confession is at the same time made that no ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... time. As well as she could, she willed her swimming gaze to remain fixed on the pad which she must keep moist. The difficulty of the task had suddenly become increased, for the pad seemed to become an animate thing. Now it appeared to retreat into the distance, and again it came floating back until it seemed about to smother her. There was a droning note in her ears; the words spoken by the other two ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... in ferrying troops across the river at Grand Gulf and Bruinsburg. In passing Vicksburg, she was damaged in the hull and had a steam-pipe cut away, but this was soon repaired. The Henry Clay was set on fire by bursting shells, and burned up; one of my yawls picked up her pilot floating on a piece of wreck, and the bulk of her crew escaped in their own yawl-boat to the shore above. The Silver Wave, Captain McMillan, the same that was with us up Steele's Bayou, passed safely, and she ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... Well, the fact of having met you, and loved you, will teach her to despise her husband, and she will be wretched. From a moral point of view, I cannot say that I think much of your great renunciation. Even as a beginning, it is poor. Besides, how do you know that Hetty isn't floating at the present moment in some star-lit mill-pond, with lovely water-lilies round her, ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... effects produced by the ancient glaciers of Caernarvonshire, and on the Boulders transported by floating ice. ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany
... it was only a matter of time. Inch by inch the cruiser dragged her keel along the sand, each minute floating a little freer and each minute putting her deck more level as the stern found the deep water. And, perhaps a half-hour from the time they had started, they had the boat riding clear and slowly going astern to take up the cable. It was out of the question to get ...
— The Adventure Club Afloat • Ralph Henry Barbour
... Church all the weight of her authority. Dante rendered these doctrines into poetry, and Giotto and his followers rendered them into form. In the Paradise of Dante, the glorification of Mary, as the "Mystic Rose" (Roxa Mystica) and Queen of Heaven,—with the attendant angels, circle within circle, floating round her in adoration, and singing the Regina Coeli, and saints and patriarchs stretching forth their hands towards her,—is all a splendid, but still indefinite vision of dazzling light crossed by shadowy forms. The painters ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... Eight had just embarked for their voyage to the starting-point. Standing on the edge of the raft that makes a floating platform for the barge, William, the hoary bargee, was pushing them off with his boat-hook, wishing them luck with deferential familiarity. The raft was thronged with Old Judasians—mostly clergymen—who were shouting hearty hortations, and evidently ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... lingered to look down the lovely lane on the left, through which I was to pass in order to reach the rocky dell of Fairy Glen, for it was perfumed, not with the breath of the flowers now asleep, but with the perfume I love most of all, the night's floating memory of ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... caused to be carried when he pursued his indefatigable march. In the eye of fancy, she perceived the gleam of arms through the duskiness of night, the glitter of spears and helmets, and the banners floating dimly on the twilight; while now and then the blast of a distant trumpet echoed along the defile, and the signal was answered by a momentary clash of arms. She looked with horror upon the mountaineers, perched on the higher cliffs, assailing the troops below with ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... middle of the bay, towered a gigantic statue, many times higher than the masts of our ship. Beyond, from behind this statue, came the broad river upon whose waters we were floating, its surface all a-glitter with the rising sun. To the East, where Nofuhl was pointing, his fingers trembling with excitement, lay the ruins of an endless city. It stretched far away into the land beyond, further even than our eyes could ...
— The Last American - A Fragment from The Journal of KHAN-LI, Prince of - Dimph-Yoo-Chur and Admiral in the Persian Navy • J. A. Mitchell
... wide, and in the faint light of the floating candle flames, just above me, I saw Mr. Dingley's face. "You weren't there! Why weren't you there?" I said, ...
— The Other Side of the Door • Lucia Chamberlain
... or two at different pitches, then struck with energy into the fine song, "Rolling Home." (Who that has steered for England in a ship—and by ship I do not mean a bustling steam-packet or a floating hotel, but a ship to whose crew England stands for fresh food, women, wine, home.... Who that has so steered the course for England, does not feel a catch at his vitals on hearing the melody, at once plaintive and triumphant, of ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... Ch'ao Tu, the watchman. T'ieh-kuai walked into a fiery furnace and bade Ch'ao follow. The latter, being afraid of imitating an act evidently associated with the supernatural world of evil spirits, refused to do so. T'ieh-kuai then told Ch'ao to step on to a leaf floating on the surface of the river, saying that it was a boat that would bear him across safely. Again the watchman refused, whereupon T'ieh-kuai, remarking that the cares of this world were evidently too weighty for him to be able to ascend to immortality, ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... had become established between them, a daily freemasonry of half an hour, and that was certainly one of the most charming half hours in his life to him. He thought of her all the rest of the day, saw her image continually during the long office hours. He was haunted and bewitched by that floating and yet tenacious recollection which the form of a beloved woman leaves in us, and it seemed to him that if he could win that little person it would be maddening happiness to him, almost ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... Portland Race. I was afraid to look up again, lest he should also recognise me, and give the alarm to his shipmates; indeed, I was not at all satisfied that he had not already suspected our intentions. A small boat was floating astern of the brig. He watched us for some time, as we returned towards the schooner, and as long as I could observe him, he was keeping his eye on us. We lost not a moment, on returning on board, in getting out a merchantman's long-boat, which we had brought ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... matter in what way it was launched, exploded, not on striking the object aimed at, but several hundred yards from it, its action upon the atmospheric strata was so terrific that any construction, warship or floating battery, within a zone of twelve thousand square yards, would be blown to atoms. This was the principle of the shell launched by the Zalinski pneumatic gun with which experiments had already been made at that epoch, but its results were ...
— Facing the Flag • Jules Verne
... basket, which, designedly or not, made me less awkwardly conscious of my hands, and we entered the drawing-room. Unaccustomed to gayeties of any kind, I was quite dazzled by the sudden and brilliant blaze of light, the few guests already assembled, and by Miss Merton's beauty enveloped in soft floating folds of gossamer, looking as though the mist itself had woven her a garment. No time, however, was given in which I could relapse into self-consciousness. Miss Darry occupied me with various statuettes and engravings, until Mr. Lang rejoined us, accompanied by a gentleman whom he ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... mother, Louisa saw her lying with an awful lull upon her face, like one who was floating away upon some great water, all resistance over, content to be carried down the stream. She put the shadow of a hand to her lips ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... as blue as the sky above, and over the valley, the wooded hills, and naked rocks lay the sunshine of early autumn, tender in its strength, mingling a balm with its burning. I seemed to be floating swiftly but gently down some lovely but treacherous river of enchanted land. And where is the river that lends itself better to this illusion than the Dordogne—ever charming, changing, and luring like a capricious, fascinating, and rather ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... silhouette against the other window, but Tim and Maria, being smaller, were merged in the pool of shadow below the level of the sill. A large, spread thing passed flutteringly up and down the room a moment, then came the rest. It settled over everything at once. A rustle was audible as of trailing, floating hair. ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... cypress-trees; humming-birds sparkle upon the jessamine of the Floridas; and bird- catching serpents hiss while suspended to the domes of the woods, where they swing about like creepers themselves.... All here ... is sound and motion.... When a breeze happens to animate these solitudes, to swing these floating bodies, to confound these masses of white, blue, green, and pink, to mix all the colors and to combine all the murmurs, there issue such sounds from the depths of the forests, and such things pass before the eyes, that I should in vain endeavor to describe them to those who have never ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... ringing for early mass was floating across the water from the city, when Armitage, with a deep breath of relief, walked from the table and threw himself with ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... green lentils and put them to soak in cold water overnight. In the morning throw away any floating on the top. Drain the lentils and put them in a stew-pan or saucepan with some stock or water, and add two onions, two carrots, a turnip, a bunch of parsley, a small teaspoonful of savoury herbs and a small head of celery. If you have no celery add half a teaspoonful of ...
— Cassell's Vegetarian Cookery - A Manual Of Cheap And Wholesome Diet • A. G. Payne
... What mists dim-floating of Idolatry Split and mishap'd the Omnipresent Sire: And first by Terror, Mercy's startling prelude, Uncharm'd the Spirit spell-bound with ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... hearing the first mellow English voice pronouncing the first kindly English sentence. The simple, slow, honest quality of the English nature gave one a sense of safety. What splendid raw material to make a nation out of! But, ah, it was sometimes dull to live with! These impressions, floating vaguely in the upper currents of the mind, were simultaneous with a thousand thoughts and anxieties, and gusts ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... and then the voices of some operatives, singing at their work, steal forth in company with the whir and hum of the spindles, and mingle with the splash of the waterfall; and the united voices of nature, industry, and man, harmonize their swelling tones, or go floating upward on the soft July air. The houses upon the hill-side seem to be endeavouring to extricate themselves from bowers of full-leafed trees; and with their white fronts, relieved by the light green blinds, look cool and inviting in the distance. High above them all, as though looking down in ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... rod swung back, a remarkable length of very fine line went floating through the air, and the boys could see something like a small dragon-fly at ...
— Harper's Young People, August 10, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... the world," Cora flung back over her shoulder. "Mr. Corliss said I couldn't imitate Sara Bernhardt, and I showed him I could." She began to hum; left a fragment of "rag-time" floating behind her as she entered her own room; and Mrs. Madison, ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... see Peter Pan, and I may as well tell you now why he was so late that night. It was because his boat had got wedged on the Serpentine between fields of floating ice, through which he had to break a perilous passage with his ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... the candle, and presently slept as one sleeps when he is young. Sometime in the night I sat bolt upright in the good bed to listen. I had heard,—or was I dreaming,—floating up from some far distance, the last faint echo of that voice of ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... wont, laughing and talking merrily. But I, nursing my wrongs, remained moody and sulky. At any other time such rare amusement would have overjoyed me; but the wonders of the great theatre that from other boys I had heard so much of, that from gaudy-coloured posters I had built up for myself, were floating vague and undefined before me in the air; and neither the open-mouthed sleeper, swallowing his endless chain of rats; nor even the live rabbit found in the stout old gentleman's hat—the last sort of person in whose hat one would have ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... approaching departure from her native land. She enjoyed the novelty of the scenes through which she passed on her journey. She was pleased with the dresses and the arms of the soldiers who accompanied her, and with the ships which were floating in the river, beneath the walls of the Castle of Dumbarton, when she arrived there. She was pleased, too, to think that, wherever she was to go, her four Maries were to go with her. She bade her mother ...
— Mary Queen of Scots, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... it was about the same width as near the mouth, and the course, which was generally west, had been interrupted by islands and sandbars. The timber consisted chiefly of elm; they saw pine burrs, and sticks of birch were seen floating down the river; they had also met with goats, such as we have heretofore seen; great quantities of buffaloe, near to which were wolves, some deer, and villages of barking squirrels. At the confluence of White river with ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... circumstances of the case. Thus it would be absurd to take too seriously our adoption at Atuona. On the part of Paaaeua it was an affair of social ambition; when he agreed to receive us in his family the man had not so much as seen us, and knew only that we were inestimably rich and travelled in a floating palace. We, upon our side, ate of his baked meats with no true animus affiliandi, but moved by the single sentiment of curiosity. The affair was formal, and a matter of parade, as when in Europe sovereigns call each other cousin. Yet, ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... loud and distinct—a scuffle—voices—curses—and now—the sound of a pistol!—in a moment more the whole house was stirring. Lester in his night robe, his broadsword in his hand, and his long grey hair floating behind, was the first to appear; the servants, old and young, male and female, now came thronging simultaneously round; and in a general body, Lester several paces at their head, his daughters following ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... my valet. He looks quite a gentleman when dressed in his Sunday clothes, and his Scotch shrewdness serves us many a good turn. He has the knack of arresting any little advantages floating on the stream of travel, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... along the ground by the beaver pushing the log with the forefeet or shoulder. When the wood is placed in the water, the beaver propels it to its under-water storage place near its lodge, where—the wood being green and heavy—it is easily secured from floating up and away, by placing a little mud over one end or by interlocking the stick with the rest of the pile. The green wood, however, soon becomes waterlogged and gives no further trouble. Thus, when the lake or river is frozen over, the beaver—for it does not hibernate—may live ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... her intercourse with Bangles,—with Bangles who had literally picked the poor wretch up,—he did not see how she herself had been concerned in the matter; but he said nothing about that, knowing the character of his Madalina. "I shall see—that—body, floating before my eyes while I live," she said, "and the gory wound, and,—and—" "Don't," said Johnny, recoiling in truth from the picture by which he was revolted. "Never again," she said, "never again! But you forced it from me, and now I shall not close ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... The intermingling dyes, which without seed That lofty land unbosoms. By the stream Three paces only were we sunder'd: yet The Hellespont, where Xerxes pass'd it o'er, (A curb for ever to the pride of man) Was by Leander not more hateful held For floating, with inhospitable wave 'Twixt Sestus and Abydos, than by me That flood, because it ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... on the deck outside the combing of the cockpit. Nirvana had no attraction for him. He resented forced inactivity as an unendurable wrong. Instead of smoking with half-closed eyes, he peered eagerly forward under the sail. He noted everything—the floating gulls and puffins, the stiff, wild-eyed cormorants, the jelly-fish, the whirling eddies of the tide. As the yacht drifted on, or was driven forward by the occasional faint puffs of air, he hissed through his teeth in the way known to ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham
... Pampas, with its calcareous concretions and the bones of terrestrial quadrupeds. This vertical section clearly tells us of a large bay of pure salt-water, gradually encroached on, and at last converted into the bed of a muddy estuary, into which floating carcasses were swept. At Punta Gorda, in Banda Oriental, I found an alternation of the Pampaean estuary deposit, with a limestone containing some of the same extinct sea-shells; and this shows either a change in the former ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... look at Miss Anne, over the girl's rumpled silk poll, with whimsically imploring eyes. Why couldn't Nan be allowed to break upon him like a salty, fragrant wave of the sea, he seemed to ask Miss Anne, bringing all sorts of floating richness, the outcrop of her fancies and affections? Aunt Anne would return the glance with her sweet, immovable deprecation and go on detaching, while Nan, with an equal obstinacy—though hers was protesting, vocable, sometimes shrill to the point of anguish—stuck ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... she immediately dragged up on the little platform, to stand on. She climbed up and looked in. It was not the vat in which she had turned the spigot, and it was half full of whey with great pieces of the curd floating around on it. ...
— Cricket at the Seashore • Elizabeth Westyn Timlow
... sat; and near them was an old grindstone, streaked with rust, and worn by many summers of sharpening scythes; a tin dipper hung on the wooden frame, nearly full of last night's rain, and with some lilac stars floating in ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... thunder deadened. Duane fell, seemed floating. There it drifted—Ray Longstreth's sweet face, white, with dark, tragic eyes, fading from his ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey
... said Felix laughingly, and dipping his oars. I cannot say exactly to which member of Gertrude's phrase he alluded; but he dipped his oars again, and they kept floating about. ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... more mundane, which also deserves consideration, I was informed that in Glasgow, with a population of about 900,000, there exists a floating class of 80,000 people, who live in lodging-houses of the same sort as, and mostly inferior to the Salvation Army Shelter of which I am now writing. In other words, out of every twelve inhabitants of this great city, one is driven to that method of obtaining a place ...
— Regeneration • H. Rider Haggard
... search among the other fragments of threshold customs and see whether they exist either separately from the formula or with a less perfect example. Secondly, where the formula has disappeared and the purpose and penalty remain, nearly the whole range of those floating beliefs and superstitions which occupy so largely the collections of folklore would supply examples. But I will select one example which will be to the point. When the Manx cottager looks for the traces of a foot in the ashes of his firegrate for the purpose of seeing ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... is yours, my cousins, and not mine," said Rosamund. "You bade me take the water, and into it I spurred the grey horse, and we sank deep, so that the waves closed above my head. Then up we came, I floating from the saddle, but I regained it, and the horse answered to my voice and bridle, and swam out for the further shore. On it swam, somewhat slantwise with the tide, so that by turning my head I could see all that passed upon the mole. I saw them come at you, ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard
... a depressing effect on the passengers of the disabled ship. Although every officer had maintained there was no danger, yet the floating away of that steamer seemed somehow to leave them alone; and people, after gazing toward the west until not a vestige of her remained in the horizon, went back to their deck-chairs, ...
— A Woman Intervenes • Robert Barr
... made no sign; but to-night it twinkled from end to end. Its handle of crimson glass sent reckless dashes of red at the papered wall, turning its dainty blue stripes into purple. Passers-by halted to catch the merry laughter floating through curtain and sash into the street, then skipped on their way with the startled consciousness that the village was wide awake. At last matters grew so uproarious that the grandsire's red kerchief came down from his ...
— Christmas - Its Origin, Celebration and Significance as Related in Prose and Verse • Various
... had left the gate, and Clelia came in with that last look of her lover still mirrored in her eyes, Sabrina lay there floating in her ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... has described how it was written—as are all such works of imagination—in response to a sort of "call"—some striking yet indefinable quality in one idea among the host always floating through the brain of the artist, that makes him instantly seize it and single it out as inviting to art-treatment. It would be preposterous to doubt her statement. But whether the inspiration ought not to have been ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... heroes. We are always valuing the soul's temperature by the thermometer of public deed or word. Yet the great sun himself, when he pours his noonday beams upon some vast hyaline boulder, rent from the eternal ice-quarries, and floating toward the tropics, never warms it a fraction above the thirty-two degrees of Fahrenheit that marked the moment when the first drop trickled ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... night, when I enter my lonely chamber, and look out upon the summer moon, 'sweet regent of the sky,' floating above me in the 'black blue vault of heaven,' shedding a flood of silver radiance over park, and wood, and water, so pure, so peaceful, so divine—and think, Where is he now?—what is he doing at this moment? wholly unconscious of this heavenly scene—perhaps revelling with his boon companions, ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... greet us. Their national flags—Heaven only knows where they came from or how they were concealed from the enemy—were displayed on all sides, and even before the enemy were clear of the village the Tricolour was floating from the Church Tower! It was truly a wonderful sight, and a day never to be forgotten. We were surrounded by offers of coffee and fruit, cider and cognac, plentifully mingled with the tears and kisses of the grateful inhabitants. Indeed, so insistent were they that ...
— The Sherwood Foresters in the Great War 1914 - 1919 - History of the 1/8th Battalion • W.C.C. Weetman
... long before he recovered consciousness. As soon as he did so, he crawled on his hands and knees to the edge of the cliff, and looked down. The Swan had disappeared. Not a sign of her remained, not so much as a floating timber showed on the surface ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty
... crowd going in and out of the tents, groups of elderly people sitting talking under the trees, lawn-tennis players at one end of the garden, the militia band playing Strauss's waltzes at the other, the scarlet and white flags floating bravely over everybody in the breeze, and a hum of many voices and a sound of merry laughter in ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... we stopped near an immense field of corn. It was so big that we could not see the end of it. Thousands of white butterflies were floating about over the corn ears. Henri Deslois didn't speak, and I watched the ears of corn which were stooping and stretching as though they were getting ready to fly. It looked as though the butterflies were bringing them wings to help them, but it was no good for the corn ears to get excited. They ...
— Marie Claire • Marguerite Audoux
... Arctic sea; and such is the persevering enterprise of our mariners, that in all likelihood this gigantic task eventually will be accomplished: but, even if it should, it is questionable whether a navigable opening in that direction would prove beneficial to commerce. The floating ice with which those high latitudes are encumbered; the intricacy of the navigation; the cold and tempestuous weather generally prevailing there, and the difficulty of obtaining aid, in cases of shipwreck, must continue to deter the ordinary ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... Suffering." The words came floating back to Katy, just as Uncle Ephraim had spoken them in the pleasant meadowland, and just as they had sometimes haunted her since, but never having so deep a meaning as now, when Helen's words suggested them again. She was suffering, ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... tall active boy, with a grave quick demeanour, but the open brow and frank sweet smile won him the love of every one. Lilly, the little girl, was about 6, a little, loving, winning thing, with eyes like violets, and long dark rich curls floating all round her, from the middle of which was uplifted a little rosy face, almost perfect in its childish beauty. Felix, the youngest boy and child, was a little, delicate, spoilt fellow, whose face seemed made ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton
... year's dances to Bacchus. Then the ode recurs to the bliss of such holy rites, luxurious interchange of wild energy and delicious repose. They long for the climax of the dance, when, with luxuriant hair all floating, they can rage and madden to the clash of heavy cymbals and the shout Evoe, Evoe, frisking like colts to the soft breathing of the holy pipe, while the mountain echoes ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton
... waterways leading off through dense mysterious forests, where strange birds called and strange plants grew—a labyrinth full of danger for the intruder, but a safe and joyous retreat for the Seminole floating on the ...
— Four American Indians - King Philip, Pontiac, Tecumseh, Osceola • Edson L. Whitney
... while so good a supply of fish, that starvation was staved off. When the ice broke up, about the middle of June, Hudson sailed from his winter quarters and went out a little way into Hudson's Bay. There they were caught and held in the floating ice—with their stores almost exhausted, and with no more fowl nor fish to be had. Then the nip of hunger came; and with it came openly the mutiny that secretly had been fermenting through those months of ...
— Henry Hudson - A Brief Statement Of His Aims And His Achievements • Thomas A. Janvier
... of that little fleet abandoned at sea for one cause or another, and floating about this way and that, as the wild winds blew or the ocean currents ran. Voyaging without purpose, as if manned by the spirits of ignorant landsmen, sometimes backward and forward over comparatively small ocean spaces, and sometimes ...
— The Rudder Grangers Abroad and Other Stories • Frank R. Stockton
... iron-makers in Pennsylvania. We have learned that the $400,000,000 annually received from our cotton crop will make us rich, when the supplies that make it are homeraised. We have reduced the commercial rate of interest from twenty-four to six per cent., and are floating four per cent. bonds. We have learned that one Northern immigrant is worth fifty foreigners, and have smoothed the path to southward, wiped out the place where Mason and Dixon's line used to be, and hung our latch-string ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... which has sometimes been given to the French plays, they are made to favour the introduction of much poetical beauty, and much dramatic interest. We have already mentioned, that there appears to be a vague, but general impression of the influence of fatality upon human conduct, floating in the public mind; and though such a notion, probably, is seldom admitted in the shape of a distinct doctrine, many circumstances indicate, that among the body of the people, and among the army in particular, ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... 3-seeded pods. Stem: From submerged rootstock; slender, branching, several feet long, covered with clear jelly, as are footstalks and lower leaf surfaces. Leaves: On long petioles attached to center of underside of leaf, floating or rising, oval to roundish, 2 to 4 in. long, 1 1/2 to 2 in. wide. Preferred Habitat - Still, rather deep water of ponds and slow streams. Flowering Season - All summer. Distribution - Parts of Asia, Africa, and Australia, Nova Scotia to Cuba, and westward from ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... Kenilworth Castle, splendid pageants were performed in her honour. As she entered the castle the gigantic porter recited verses to greet Her Majesty, gods and goddesses offered gifts and compliments on bended knee, and the Lady of the Lake, surrounded by Tritons and Nereids, came on a floating island to do homage to the peerless Elizabeth and to welcome her to all the sport the castle could afford. For an account of the strange conduct of Orion and his dolphin upon this occasion, we refer our readers to Sir Walter Scott's Kenilworth; and ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... be glad that Brissenden was dead. He had hated the crowd so, and here all that was finest and most sacred of him had been thrown to the crowd. Daily the vivisection of Beauty went on. Every nincompoop in the land rushed into free print, floating their wizened little egos into the public eye on the surge of Brissenden's greatness. Quoth one paper: "We have received a letter from a gentleman who wrote a poem just like it, only better, some ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... a floating population of quiet industrious soakers. The incurable river man and the river girl ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... a huge, misshapen rock, against which the hoarse waves beat unceasingly. On this rock three pelicans are standing in a defiant attitude. A dark sky lowers in the background, while two sea-gulls and a gigantic cormorant eye with extreme disfavor the floating corpse of a drowned woman in the foreground. A few bracelets, coral necklaces, and other articles of jewelry, scattered around ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... his resolution, and did not appear among the angels at the breakfast-table at Castle Hermitage. "It won't last a good week," said Sir Ulick to himself. But that good week, and the next, it lasted. Harry's studies, to be sure, were sometimes interrupted by floating visions of the Miss Darrells, Dartfords, and Lardners. He every now and then sung bits of their songs, repeated their bon-mots, and from time to time laying down his book, started up and practised quadrille steps, to ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... the leadership of a people so that its moral, its ideals, and its will shall make it develop its destiny in such vigour that it shall be safe from the assault of any enemy will that may assail it. All statesmanship worthy of the name is strategic—all other statesmanship is but a glittering bubble, floating in an empty void. If the moral and ideals of a people be not deep-rooted in vigour capable of defending those ...
— Right Above Race • Otto Hermann Kahn
... among the weeds, and set off through the darkness as fast as I could. I just stopped once and knelt, and twisted back my head in the helmet and had a look up. It was a most extraordinary bright green-blue above, and the two canoes and the boat floating there very small and distant like a kind of twisted H. And it made me feel sick to squint up at it, and think what the pitching and swaying of ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... the Sculptor and I leaned back in our chairs and lighted fresh cigars. My enthusiasm has not cooled for the sports of my youth. With a comfortable stool, a well-filled basket, and a long jointed rod, I, like many another staid old painter, can still get an amazing amount of enjoyment watching a floating cork, but I didn't propose to follow those two lunatics. I knew the Man from the Quarter—had known him from the day of his birth—and knew what he would do and where he would go (over his head sometimes) for a poor devil of a fish half as long as his finger, and I had ...
— The Man In The High-Water Boots - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith
... running out swift and strong, and it will be well to keep a sharp lookout for this floating ice, Mr. Larkin," said I, as I ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... started—stooped—around him strown The winter floods had scattered heaps of stone: Of these the heaviest thence he gathered there, And slung them with a more than common care. 1220 Meantime the Serf had crept to where unseen Himself might safely mark what this might mean; He caught a glimpse, as of a floating breast, And something glittered starlike on the vest; But ere he well could mark the buoyant trunk, A massy fragment smote it, and it sunk:[lb] It rose again, but indistinct to view, And left the waters of a purple hue, Then deeply disappeared: ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... capable of destroying a demonstrated truth? Although a man should have the secret of curing all diseases, of making the lame to walk, of raising all the dead of a city, of floating in the air, of arresting the course of the sun and of the moon, will he be able to convince me by all this that two and two do not make four; that one makes three and that three makes but one; that a God who fills the ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... researchful, differ widely as to the number of the victims in this cruel massacre; according to De Thou, there were about two thousand persons killed in Paris the first day; D'Aubigne says three thousand; Brantome speaks of four thousand bodies that Charles IX. might have seen floating down the Seine; La Popeliniere reduces them to one thousand. There is to be found, in the account-books of the city of Paris, a payment to the grave-diggers of the cemetery of the Innocents for having interred ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot |
