"Floating" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... full of peril as war itself. In his address at Seneca Falls his field of view, confined to war-burdens and rights withheld from "subjugated" States, did not include the vision that thrilled others, who saw the flag floating over every inch of American territory, now forever freed from slavery. "When we were free from debt," he said, "a man could support himself with six hours of daily toil. To-day he must work two hours longer to pay ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... some of the concussion of the exploding rocket. When his eyes snapped open he was floating like a feather in open, airless space. His rubberoid space suit, living up to its rigid tests, had inflated to its elastic limit. But it held and within its automatic units began feeding him oxygen, ...
— Shipwreck in the Sky • Eando Binder
... 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 Champion ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... others crawl, or creep; others fly; others swim; others fly, walk, or swim, by turns. The wings of birds, and the fins of fishes, are like oars, that cut the waves either of air or water, and steer the floating body either of the bird, or fish, whose structure is like that of a ship. But the pinions of birds have feathers with a down, that swells in the air, and which would grow unwieldy in the water. And, on the contrary, the fins of fishes have sharp and dry points, ...
— The Existence of God • Francois de Salignac de La Mothe- Fenelon
... chair, heels upon a low, flat-topped writing desk, newspaper in hand, reading an account of the failure of Dr. Nansen to reach the North Pole. That renowned and hardy explorer proposed reaching the spot by floating on an ice floe. We are all familiar with the fact that he did actually get to within about three hundred miles of the coveted spot, but was obliged to turn back for want ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman
... lurking near. But Old Mr. Toad, swelling out that queer music bag in his throat and singing with all his might, never once forgot that wise saying of his, and so he was the first to see what looked like nothing so much as a little detached bit of the blackness of the Green Forest floating out towards the Smiling Pool. Instantly he stopped singing. Now that was a signal. When he stopped singing, his nearest neighbor stopped singing, then the next one and the next, and in a minute there ...
— The Adventures of Old Mr. Toad • Thornton W. Burgess
... offset those continued gains that began to heap up in such an alluring pile upon his portion of the table. The watchers began to observe this, and gathered more closely about his chair, fascinated by the luck with which the cards came floating into his hands, the cool judgment of his critical plays, the reckless abandon with which he forced success. The little room was foul with tobacco smoke and electric with ill-repressed excitement, yet he played on imperturbably, apparently hearing nothing, seeing nothing, his ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... moonlight nights, I could watch the silvery foam, marking the spot beneath where he lay hid; and I would stand on tip- toe, peering out, until at length I would come to fancy I could see his hideous form floating below the waters. Then, as the little white-sailed boats stole by him, tremblingly, I used to tremble too, lest he should suddenly open his grim jaws and gulp them down; and when they had all safely reached the dark, soft ...
— John Ingerfield and Other Stories • Jerome K. Jerome
... Whole: to select these with judgment, so that a leap from one to the other be possible, and (in our old figure) by chaining them together, a passable Bridge be effected: this, as heretofore, continues our only method. Among such light-spots, the following, floating in much wild matter about Perfectibility, has seemed ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... risen a flat diamond-shaped head with wicked green eyes which came flickering upwards, waving gently from side to side, until a foot or more of glossy scaly neck was visible. Slowly the vicious head came floating up, while at every oscillation a fresh burst of shrieks came ...
— Beyond the City • Arthur Conan Doyle
... wife in Lent Fearing that Sarah would continue ill, wife and I removed Parliament hath voted 2s. per annum for every chimney in England Peruques of hair, as the fashion now is for ladies to wear Raising of our roofs higher to enlarge our houses See a dead man lie floating upon the waters Sermon; but, it being a Presbyterian one, it was so long To Mr. Holliard's in the morning, thinking to be let blood Up early and took my physique; it wrought all the morning well Whether he would have me go to law ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Diary of Samuel Pepys • David Widger
... sat on their horses within the covering of the trees, and watched eagerly, while the hostile forces massed for battle. The Southern cavalry was supported by infantry also on its flanks, and once again Dick caught sight of Jeb Stuart with his floating plume. But that time he was too far away for any of the Northern riflemen to reach him with a bullet, and as before he disappeared quickly in the clouds of dust and smoke which never ceased to float over ...
— The Sword of Antietam • Joseph A. Altsheler
... procession of masks in carriages on the Lung' Arno, and in the evening there was a feeble moccoletti display. The grand masked ball at the Casino about this time presents an irresistible attraction to the floating population in Florence. I was foolish enough to go. All were obliged to be dressed in character or in full ball-costume: no dominoes allowed. The Casino, I was told, is the largest club-house in the world; ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... without stirring. Then the corporal, drawing his sword, said, 'You can pray and work too; obey at once, or I will kill you.' Compelled to choose between possible and certain death, the poor fellows took up their hatchets, and with the help of the grenadiers, the mast was promptly cut away and sent floating. It was high time, for hardly were we free from this dangerous burden when we felt a fearful shock. A pine-stem borne down by the stream had struck the boat. We all shuddered, but luckily the planks were not driven in this time. Would the boat, ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... men rushed upon deck, followed closely by the women. Though the night was cloudy, there was little wind or sea, nor was it so dark but that just off the port bow a black mass could be discerned floating low in the water. ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... searching out the causes which produced them. She had a metaphysical turn, which inclined her to reflect on every object that passed by her; and her mind was not like a mirror, which receives every floating image, but does not retain them: she had not any prejudices, for every opinion was examined before ...
— Mary - A Fiction • Mary Wollstonecraft
... the steps a little sideways [Jacob sat on the window-seat talking to Durrant; he smoked, and Durrant looked at the map], the old man, with his hands locked behind him, his gown floating black, lurched, unsteadily, near the wall; then, upstairs he went into his room. Then another, who raised his hand and praised the columns, the gate, the sky; another, tripping and smug. Each went up a staircase; three lights were ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... house offered somewhat more delicate food to the women and children, chief among it a great pewter bowl of plum-porridge with bits of toasted cracker floating upon it. ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... rope till some fifteen yards were over, then he fastened it to the ring of the head rope, and had the satisfaction of finding that the boat rode easily to the floating anchor, rising lightly over the waves, and not shipping a drop of water. He then took the baler and got rid of the water that had found its way on board, Dan, after getting down ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... from harm; If Saturn's son have given thee utterly The Trojans to destroy, yet, ere thou slay, Far from my waters drive them o'er the plain; For now my lovely stream is fill'd with dead; Nor can I pour my current to the sea, With floating corpses chok'd, whilst thou pursuest The work of death, insatiate: stay thy hand! With horror I behold ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... were moving east or west. His life was like the sparkling air in which he moved and breathed. He stood upon the deck of the vessel, with the wind filling the sails above, while at a little distance stood Kate Bonnet, her ribbons floating in the breeze. He would have been glad to sing aloud, but he knew that that would not be proper in the presence of the ladies and the captain. And so he let his heart do his singing, which was ...
— Kate Bonnet - The Romance of a Pirate's Daughter • Frank R. Stockton
... on the 1st of October last, amounted in the whole to the sum of $120 millions, consisting of the unredeemed balance of the debt contracted before the late war ($39 millions), the amount of the funded debt contracted in consequence of the war ($64 millions), and the amount of the unfunded and floating debt, including the various issues of Treasury notes, $17 millions, which is in gradual ...
— State of the Union Addresses of James Madison • James Madison
... rain dashed into Hite's face. The rail fences, in zigzag lines, were coming into view. A mist was floating white against the dark densities of the woods. He heard the water splashing from the eaves heavily into the gullies below, and then the constable once ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... floating about (the official proclamation began) to the effect that there had been an explosion in the Treasury at Vienna. It had been stated that a large quantity of gold had been stolen, and that a disaster of some kind had occurred in the Treasury vaults. Then a ridiculous story had been ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr
... disabilities over the aeroplane. It had to have its own kennel. It was almost impossible to get it into its shed if the wind was against it. The kennels had, therefore, to be either on wheels or floating. Furthermore, not being able to replenish its gas, a Zeppelin had always to return to its base for supplies. But the gas balloon suited the smug character of the German. Unlike the aviator who threw himself into the air on ...
— The Sequel - What the Great War will mean to Australia • George A. Taylor
... the beavers had sent the waters far back in a tiny sheet like a little lake. But as Henry saw, they were going to raise the dam higher, and they were working with the intelligence and energy that belong so peculiarly to the beaver. Four powerful fellows were floating a log in the water, ready to put it into place, and others on the bank ...
— The Keepers of the Trail - A Story of the Great Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... the ship, in the midst of the darkness and tumult and terror. Another boat laden with people was near them. For some time they saw the heartrending spectacle of the sinking vessel, and the sea strewn with mattresses, seats, planks, &c, to which people were clinging, floating, and shrieking for succour, in the dark water all round them. But they gradually pulled further and further out of the horrible chaos of despair, and, with the other boat still consorting with them, rowed on. They watched from a distance ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... flatboat yielded to the inevitable: the palatial steamboat was supreme. But the days of the steamboat were numbered when the civil war cast its blight over the land; and when the years of strife were over, so also was the river traffic which had created the floating palaces of the Mississippi. There were several things that operated to prevent the reorganization of the fleet of steamboats which for size, beauty and capacity were found in no other part of the world. Many of these boats had ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 810, July 11, 1891 • Various
... his arms the little Bacchus, who in alarm is endeavoring to escape from his embraces. Near it, on a yellow ground, is the bearded head of a man, with two claws projecting from his temples like horns, and a beard floating as if it was in the water. It may probably be a mask of Oceanus, who is represented on coins of Agrigentum in a somewhat similar manner. Under the head is the figure ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... summer of the late war, when our navy engaged the Dutch; a day wherein the two most mighty and best appointed fleets which any age had ever seen, disputed the command of the greater half of the globe, the commerce of nations, and the riches of the universe. While these vast floating bodies, on either side, moved against each other in parallel lines, and our countrymen, under the happy conduct of his Royal Highness, went breaking, little by little, into the line of the enemies, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... been lying awake for some time, and I am sure I am better. I don't see strange-coloured figures floating about the room as I did yesterday. Were you not out of the ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... caught me, even in my sorry plight, because it was human. Wild birds, beaten to the ground by the storm and then engulfed in the waters, were screeching as they drowned. Hares and rabbits, and a fox, wherever he came from, all went past me on a floating tree, and they were squealing for mercy, not from each other, but from the elements. The other sound I had heard, however, was quite different, and I listened ...
— The Black Colonel • James Milne
... chained across the river at a narrow gorge. This held back for two nights and a day the heavy cultch floating down stream, and piled up a good deal of water, too, for the boom soon became a regular dam. Below the dam thus made the level of ...
— Ruth Fielding in the Great Northwest - Or, The Indian Girl Star of the Movies • Alice B. Emerson
... in the Baltic. After all, Britannia did "rule the waves," and was more able to rule them than ever. The fleet was assembled for her majesty's personal review, and consisted of 240 steam vessels, including gun-boats, mortar-boats, and floating batteries. There were three vessels of 100 guns each, six of 91, an equal number of 80 guns, and vessels of every order; frigates, brigs, sloops, &c, had their proportionate numbers. The steam-power equalled that of 31,000 horses, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... mark, another shrill, defiant yell came floating back to where Kitty sat reining in her impatient Midnight. At the signal, the two ponies leaped from a lope into a full run, while Kitty loosed the restraining rein and the black horse stretched away in pursuit. Spurs ring, shouting, entreating, the two lads ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright
... ever be, men who, after having submitted some portion of their religious belief to the principle of authority, will seek to exempt several other parts of their faith from its influence, and to keep their minds floating at random between liberty and obedience. But I am inclined to believe that the number of these thinkers will be less in democratic than in other ages; and that our posterity will tend more and more to a single division into two parts—some relinquishing Christianity entirely, ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... the unreclaimed deserters, doubtless make up a large part of the floating population of homeless men in our large cities. How large a part it is impossible to say, for they are likely to give assumed names and deny the possession of families. Mrs. Solenberger[43] has noted, however, that if they are asked, not "Are you married?" but a less direct question ...
— Broken Homes - A Study of Family Desertion and its Social Treatment • Joanna C. Colcord
... Commercial and Colonial expansion became a definite and avowed object of the former's policy, she found, whereso she might look, that Britain was there, in the way—"everywhere British colonies, British coaling stations, and floating over a fifth of the globe the British flag." Could anything be more exasperating? And these "absent-minded beggars" the English, without any forethought or science or design, without Prussian organization ...
— The Healing of Nations and the Hidden Sources of Their Strife • Edward Carpenter
... heard a scream above our fire, and jumped up to see a dark, slim bird floating southward far above us—a whooping crane, we knew by her cry and her long neck. We ran to the edge of the island, hoping we might see her alight, but she wavered southward along the rivercourse ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... the old gentleman," continued Hugh; "and after meeting him, do you take any stock in the stories that have been floating around town about his being the clever rascal who disappeared from Wall Street two ...
— The Chums of Scranton High - Hugh Morgan's Uphill Fight • Donald Ferguson
... passed the mountains, and began to descend into the rich vales of Tuscany—when from the heights above Fesole we beheld the city of Florence, and above it the young moon and the evening star suspended side by side; and floating over the whole of the Val d'Arno, and the lovely hills which enclose it, a mist, or rather a suffusion of the richest rose colour, which gradually, as the day declined, faded, or rather deepened into purple; ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... after all which has been said to satisfy you, that compulsory servitude, if such there were among the Jews, cannot properly be pleaded in justification of yours; a question may still be floating in your mind whether, if God directed his chosen people to enslave the Heathen, slavery should not be regarded as a good system of servitude? Just as pertinently may you ask, whether that is not a good system of servitude, which is found in some ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... begin by becoming intermittently conscious of the brilliant colors and vibrations of the human aura; yet others find themselves with increasing frequency seeing and hearing something to which those around them are blind and deaf; others, again, see faces, landscapes, or colored clouds floating before their eyes in the dark, before they sink to rest; while perhaps the commonest experience of all is that of those who begin to recollect with greater and greater clearness what they have seen and heard ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita
... have gotten a load of trouble and difficulties off your hands that I fear will multiply every day, had you made it a point to procure my liberty when you first arrived, and not left me floating on the promises of men whom you did not know. You were then a new character. You had come in consequence of their own request that Morris should be recalled; and had you then, before you opened any subject of negociation that might arise ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... about the breaker, that on dark, nights, when the wind blows, and the rain falls in great sheets, there are mysterious lights floating ...
— Boy Scouts in the Coal Caverns • Major Archibald Lee Fletcher
... picture, over which strayed large herds of cattle, or with forests of gigantic trees, from amongst which, every now and then, peeped out some palm-thatched mountain settlement, with its small thread of blue smoke floating up into the calm, clear morning air, while the blue hills in the distance rose higher and higher, and more and more blue, and dreamy, and indistinct, until their rugged summits could not be distinguished ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 579 - Volume 20, No. 579, December 8, 1832 • Various
... vagrant thoughts might be, she was entirely unprepared to see a human head, made sleek by sea water, emerge from the floating ...
— The Green Mouse • Robert W. Chambers
... Nymphes, which now had Flowers their fill, Ran all in haste to see that silver brood, As they came floating on the Christal Flood; Whom when they sawe, they stood amazed still, Their wondring eyes to fill; Them seem'd they never saw a sight so fayre, Of Fowles, so lovely, that they sure did deeme Them heavenly borne, or to be that same payre Which through the Skie draw Venus silver Teeme; For sure they ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... the door opened cautiously, and a head appeared. It was a mass of red, unkempt, uncut hair, wildly floating round a great, gaunt forehead; the cheeks yellow and hollow, the mouth fallen, the thin white lips not trembling but shaking, the sunken eyes, once small, now glaring with the light of madness—all ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... is a way of saying that he who has his mind perfectly controlled can treat himself to any mental pleasure he chooses. Although the Buddha and others are represented as performing such feats as floating in the air whenever it suits them, yet the instruction given as to how the powers may be acquired starts by bidding the neophyte pass through the four stages of Jhana or meditation in which ordinary external ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... Jack clasped his hands and dived from his boat. He came to the top and swam forward with desperate strokes. He saw the upturned canoe, the floating paddle, the half-submerged Tam-o'-Shanter. Then a mass of dripping golden hair cleft the surface, ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon
... biographers, from his poem on the Whales, think it not improbable that he visited the Bermudas; but it seems much more likely, that he should amuse himself with forming an imaginary scene, than that so important an incident, as a visit to America, should have been left floating in conjectural probability. ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... an interpretation. No white angel ever floats more clearly before the 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 or pine,—red ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... they, and sped along as if shod with wings, his mane and tail floating gracefully as ...
— Dorothy Dainty's Gay Times • Amy Brooks
... on the eve of discovery, their topsails rosy with the sunset fire. The Admiral kept pacing, pacing; watching, on the one hand, lest his men surprise him with a mutiny, and on the other, glancing overside for a green bough or a floating log, anything that would be a sign of land. We saw him come in pride and wonder, and we ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al
... cavalry, and abandoned the combat. The night was much darker than usual, and a heavy fog, rising from the plain, added to its density and dampness. The skies were invisible, hidden by heavy masses of floating clouds ...
— The Texan Scouts - A Story of the Alamo and Goliad • Joseph A. Altsheler
... even by Raphael, but has been surpassed by none. Michael Angelo has represented him in majestic flight, sweeping through the air, surrounded by genii, partly supporting, partly borne along with him, covered by his floating drapery; they are the distinct syllables, the separate virtues of his creating word. In the first (large) compartment we see him with extended hands, assigning to the sun and moon their respective paths. In the second, he awakens the first ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... rest of that month of November the Mayflower lay at anchor in Cape Cod harbor, and formed a floating home for the women and children, while the men were out exploring the country, with a careful and steady shrewdness and good sense, to determine where should be the site of the future colony. The record of their adventures is given in their journals with that sweet homeliness ...
— Betty's Bright Idea; Deacon Pitkin's Farm; and The First Christmas - of New England • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Thad, if the time should ever come when we're up against a hard proposition, with defeat staring us in the face, and one of our team was injured, I'd grab at Nick like a drowning man does at a plank floating near." ...
— The Chums of Scranton High at Ice Hockey • Donald Ferguson
... and struck out vigorously, without any expectation, however, of being able to maintain himself in the water for more than a very short time. Escape from the tangled rigging and floating pieces of the wreck was a difficult matter; but the water was very calm inside the reef, and not at all cold. He tried to save a woman as she was swept past him: for a time he supported a child, but the effort to save it was useless. ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... at present entertained by chemists, for the expulsion of the carbonic acid. (Whilst deep beneath the surface, the carbonate of lime was, I presume, in a fluid state. Hutton, it is known, thought that all amygdaloids were produced by drops of molten limestone floating in the trap, like oil in water: this no doubt is erroneous, but if the matter forming the summit of Red Hill had been cooled under the pressure of a moderately deep sea, or within the walls of a dike, we should, in all probability, have had a trap rock associated with large masses of compact, ...
— Volcanic Islands • Charles Darwin
... use of fishing when the compliments are floating on the surface within your reach," said the young ...
— Hester's Counterpart - A Story of Boarding School Life • Jean K. Baird
... cubical structure. But the greatest part is tinged by the admixture of the marl, and that in various degrees, from the slightest tinge of red, to the most perfect opacity. Thus, the rock appears as if it had been a mass of fluid salt, in which had been floating a quantity of marly substance, not uniformly mixed, but every where separating and subsiding ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 1 (of 4) • James Hutton
... survived only seven, all suffering from severe sickness, and some nearly at the last extremity. Still his mind was full of the most sanguine hopes, especially when, on the 22nd August, he found himself floating on the waters of the Niger, and advancing towards the ultimate object of his ambition. He hired canoes to convey his party to Maraboo, and the river here, a mile in breadth, was so full and so deep, that its current carried him easily over the rapids, but with a velocity, which was even in ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... three or four years in this manner, between music, magestry, projects, and journeys, floating incessantly from one object to another, and wishing to fix though I knew not on what, but insensibly inclining towards study. I was acquainted with men of letters, I had heard them speak of literature, and sometimes mingled in the conversation, ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... faire and warm weather had even ignited the aire and prepar'd the materials to conceive the fire, which devour'd after an incredible manner houses, furniture, and every thing. Here we saw the Thames cover'd with goods floating, all the barges and boats laden with what some had time and courage to save, as, on ye other, ye carts etc., carrying out to the fields, which for many miles were strew'd with moveables of all sorts, and tents erecting to shelter both people and what goods they could get away. Oh ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... Cross ship, saw a couple of battleships approaching, while a huge Zeppelin like a great bird of prey floated overhead. How many submarines were playing around beneath him, he could not guess. One thing was clear. They were in a position stranger than any story, madder than any dream. Floating there, almost exhausted in the sea, they were to be in the center of a sea fight. Velo still wept, and Zaidos himself felt a sob of ...
— Shelled by an Unseen Foe • James Fiske
... likewise fled at our approach, leaving my lord and his men to scale the walls and gain possession, without any resistance. In the meantime the ships continued to batter the town and fort, until they saw the red cross of England floating from the walls. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... out against the red background, rolling and rising, and leaping forward, flinging back smoke and burning sparks up into the air behind them, and throbbing and panting like living creatures in their race for revenge. From the south, came a three-decked vessel, a great island of floating steel, with a flag as red as the angry sky behind it, snapping in the wind. To the south of it plunged two long low-lying torpedo boats, flying the French tri-color, and still further to the north towered three magnificent hulls of the White Squadron. Vengeance was written ...
— Cinderella - And Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... Pan should be awakened. Soft changes, the gradual shifting of every shadow on every leaf, begin to show the waning hours. Ineffectual thunder-storms have gathered and gone by, hopelessly defeated. The floating-bridge is trembling and resounding beneath the pressure of one heavy wagon, and the quiet fishermen change their places to avoid the tiny ripple that glides stealthily to their feet above the half-submerged ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... the Belgian army was one of our firm friends. My introduction to him was when I heard a bit of a Liszt rhapsody floating into the kitchen from our piano, the fingers rapid and fluent, and long nails audible on the keys. I remember the first meal with him, a luncheon of fried sardines, fruit cake, bread and cheese. The doctor ...
— Golden Lads • Arthur Gleason and Helen Hayes Gleason
... coast of Greenland. Where the shore was swept by a strong current, these bergs doubtless drifted away; but along the most of the coast line they appear to have lain thickly grouped next the shores, gradually delivering their loads of stones and finer debris to the bottom. These masses of floating ice in many cases seem to have prevented the sea waves from attaining the shore, and thus hindered the formation of those beaches which in their present elevated condition enable us to interpret the old position ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... a moment—a moment while she was all airy grace, radiant, and alluring, floating close to me, with our hands clasped. Then it appeared the music had ceased, the couples were finding seats, and Sally and I were accosted ...
— The Rustlers of Pecos County • Zane Grey
... were hung with pale blue silk and painted with white enamel and furnished with satin-wood; the passages had marble floors; there were quantities of flowers everywhere, and books, and the electric light. In fact, it was the luxurious floating hotel a modern liner must be to entice such people as those I saw in the luggage bureau to travel in it. The meals were most elaborate and excellent; and I feel sure that any royal family happening to travel incognito on the ship would have been satisfied with ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... likely to keep this hidden from the girl for a while, until he tried his luck at love. If love failed, then the disclosure might be made to drive the young woman to him; a threat to render her complacent. The negro evidently knew very little as to what had occurred, merely the floating gossip of the slave quarters, and some few things the doctor had mentioned. But there was a man living at the Landing who would be informed ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... the common sort. A man steeped in a corrupt atmosphere of this description is no longer open to the genial impulses of nature and truth, nor sees visions of ideal beauty, nor dreams of antique grace and grandeur, nor has the finest works of art continually hovering and floating through his uplifted fancy; but the images that haunt it are rules of the academy, charters, inaugural speeches, resolutions passed or rescinded, cards of invitation to a council-meeting, or the annual dinner, prize medals, and the king's diploma, constituting him ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... into yellow bloom still finer, more feathery and lacelike. The stems are so infinitesimally small, and of so dark a green, that at a short distance they do not show, and the cloud of blossom seems floating in the air; at times it looks like golden dust. With a clear blue sky behind it, as it is often seen, it looks like a golden snow-storm. The plant is a tyrant and a nuisance,—the terror of the farmer; it takes ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... down in the direction of Bordeaux. This bold movement was prevented by Blaise de Montluc, who, adopting the suggestion of another, and appropriating the credit due to the sagacity of this nameless genius, detached one of the numerous floating windmills that were moored in the Garonne, and having loaded it with stones, sent it down with the current against Coligny's bridge. Not only were the chains that bound the structure broken, but the very boats on which it rested were carried away as far as to Bordeaux itself. It ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... dew; the dark, mysterious boskage of Stow Wood; the scent of the syringa in the lane at Beckley; the white mist sheeting the Cherwell vale. And supper when they got home—for memory is so powerful an alchemist as to transmute suppers as well as sunsets. What suppers! Cider-cup with borage floating in it, cold lamb and mint sauce, watercress, and a triangular commons of Stilton. Why, he had not tasted ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... to move, she rushed into the surf and secured the floating garment, made another dart at something else, and was knocked down by a roller. I had her on her feet in a moment, but she dashed the water out of her eves and looked wildly to and ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates
... principally with the Man and the Maid, the Miasma pervades it to such an extent that I feel justified in putting his name on the bills. Webster's Dictionary gives the meaning of the word 'miasma' as 'an infection floating in the air; a deadly exhalation'; and, in the opinion of Mr Robert Ferguson, his late employer, that description, though perhaps a little too flattering, on the whole summed up Master Roland Bean pretty ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... But just the summer before he had been grievously offended. Mr. Scott had gone on the annual excursion of the Sons of Scotland to Muskoka. Here the endless chain of jeweled lakes, the fairy islands floating on the dark waters, the rugged, barren rocks set in masses of soft greenery, and above all the wild spirit of freedom that pervaded this new beauty land, had enchanted the minister's tired soul. So, upon his return, he had declared in a tea-meeting speech ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... was from the south, and blew so heavily that I anticipated rough weather at the commencement of March. But that rough month set in with renewed heat, consequent on the wind returning to its old quarter the E.S.E. There were however some heavy clouds floating about, and from the closeness of the atmosphere I hoped that rain would have fallen, but all these favourable signs vanished, the thermometer ascending to more ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... his depth: the waters swirled above him; and it was some time before he rose to the surface again. He struck out with hands and feet and swam about in a circle until he had made quite sure from what point he had entered the water. And soon too he saw the lily again floating lonely among the ...
— Immensee • Theodore W. Storm
... demand that Canada should now take a part lay in the new-born imperial and national consciousness. The crisis served to precipitate the emotions and opinions which had been vaguely floating in the Canadian mind. The Jubilee festivities and the British preference had increased imperial sentiment; and, with returning prosperity and rapid growth, national pride was getting the better of ...
— The Day of Sir Wilfrid Laurier - A Chronicle of Our Own Time • Oscar D. Skelton
... Forster, I suppose, who furnished Macready with it, who made it over &c., &c., &c.—As short as I can tell, this way it happened: the captain woke me one bright Sunday morning to say there was a ship floating keel uppermost half a mile off; they lowered a boat, made ropes fast to some floating canvas, and towed her towards our vessel. Both met halfway, and the little air that had risen an hour or two before, sank at once. Our men made the wreck fast in high glee at having 'new trousers out of ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... ring to your father on the day that we were betrothed," went on my mother, "and I took it back again from his corpse after he had been found floating in the sea. Now I pass it on to you who soon will be all that is left ...
— The Virgin of the Sun • H. R. Haggard
... surrounding objects were barely visible. Great blocks and spires and angular fragments of ice projected into observation out of profound obscurity. Overhead mighty and grotesque forms, attached to the invisible roof, seemed like creatures floating in the air, to which an imagination much less active than that of Ippegoo might easily have given grinning mouths and glaring eyes; and the atmosphere of the place was so intensely cold that even Eskimo garments ...
— Red Rooney - The Last of the Crew • R.M. Ballantyne
... have us over. An' don't let that old oar o' yourn range about so. I can't git no hold o' the water." The boat lifted suddenly on a wave and sank again in the trough, the sail flapped, and a great cold splash of salt water came aboard, floating the fish to the stern, against Banks's feet. Chauncey, grumbling heartily, began to bail with a square-built wooden scoop for which he reached far behind him ...
— The Life of Nancy • Sarah Orne Jewett
... seen these pilgrims before, but she had heard them; and Mrs. Maldon had been acquainted with all their footfalls. They were tragic to Rachel; they infected her with the most recondite horror of existence; they left tragedy floating behind them in the lane like an invisible but oppressive cloud. Their utterly incurious indifference to Rachel in her peignoir at ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... appeared before them, a river of ink on whose burnished surface lights swam in long winding streaks and oily blobs. By the floating pier a County Council steamboat strained its hawsers, snoring huskily. Bells were jingling in her engine-room as the two gained the head ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... answer her. But he had no strength even to move his lips in response to her kiss, no power to raise a hand. It was as though his will no longer had control over his muscles, as though his consciousness were something apart from his body, something floating in space, voiceless, nerveless, motionless, apart from himself, apart from all save the love she had for him, and the love he ...
— The Rider of Waroona • Firth Scott
... happens; for if you had, you might have noticed (provided you had had the courage to look into the basin), that after a few seconds, the blood which had been taken away separated itself of its own accord into two portions; the one a yellowish transparent liquid, the other an opaque red mass floating on the top, and which is called the coagulum of the blood or clot. This coagulum owes its color to an infinity of minute red bodies of which we will speak more fully by and by, and which are retained as if ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... thought could be traced on his countenance and yet he must have been thinking, for he suddenly collapsed, sank down on a rude bench and rested his head on his hands as if he had come to some disagreeable, and perhaps terrible conclusion. And so indeed he had. The uneasy suspicions which had been floating in his mind in a state of solution were suddenly crystallized by this untoward event. The absurdity of a man's having tramped twenty miles through an almost unbroken wilderness to preach the gospel to a garter snake, ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... bow of the ship, and there we waited. There was nothing to be done. No boat would live for a moment in the sea on that reef, and all I could advise was that when she went to pieces everyone should try to get hold of a floating fragment; but I doubt whether a man would have been alive a quarter of an hour after ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty
... she was a fair swimmer—happy hours spent in the swimming-tent had ensured so much; but it was her first experience of fighting the water in all the crippling fineries of race-week attire. Her shoes, her skirts, the floating ends of sash and scarf all held her down; her soaking hat flopped over her eyes, her very gloves seemed to lessen the force of her stroke; but breathless and spent as she was, she could not pause while from behind arose ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... in three volumes. She saw her way pretty clearly to the end of the first; she had ideas for the second; the third must take care of itself—until she reached it. Hero and heroine ready to her hand; subordinate characters vaguely floating in the background. After an hour or two of meditation, she sat down and dashed at ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... over, he sought out the little news-sheet, to make sure that he had read aright; his servant had folded it up and laid it aside on a shelf, he unfolded it with a hand which trembled; the same lines stared at him in the warm light of sunrise as in the faint glimmer of the floating wick. The very curtness and coldness of the announcement testified to its exactitude. He did not any longer doubt its truth; but there were no details, no explanations: he pondered on the possibilities of obtaining them; ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida
... business of floating old Chiswick as a money-making proposition I had never realized what a perfectly foul time those Stock Exchange chappies must have when the public isn't biting freely. Nowadays I read that bit they put in the financial reports about "The market ...
— My Man Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... trying to light up cigarettes themselves, and jabbering all the time, why then you seize on a civil offer to risk your neck in a racing car as a drowning man would catch at a torpedo if he found it floating handy." ...
— In the Mist of the Mountains • Ethel Turner
... the Aryans was applied by them to all they saw in the sky. Sometimes, as we have said, the clouds were cows; they were also dragons, which sought to slay the sun; or great ships floating across the sky, and casting anchor upon earth; or rocks, or mountains, or deep caverns, in which evil deities hid the golden light. Then, also, they were shaped by fancy into animals of various kinds-the bear, the wolf, the dog, the ox; and into giant ...
— Fairy Tales; Their Origin and Meaning • John Thackray Bunce
... the crude beginnings of the money-machine in politics,—the beginnings of the downfall of parties,—the beginnings of the overthrow of the people as the political power. Those stiff-armed men were the "floating voters" of that ward of Pulaski. They had been bought up by a rich candidate of the opposition party, which was less scrupulous than our party, then in the flush of devotion to "principles" and led by such old-fashioned men as my father with old-fashioned notions of honor and honesty. Those "floaters" ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips
... with fierce winds Orion arm'd Hath vex'd the Red Sea coast, whose waves o'erthrew Busiris, and his Memphian chivalry, While with perfidious hatred they pursued The sojourners of Goshen, who beheld From the safe shore their floating carcasses And broken chariot wheels; so thick bestrewn, Abject and lost lay these, covering the flood, Under amazement of their hideous change. He call'd so loud, that all the hollow deep Of Hell resounded."—P. L. b. ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... however, was unusually high, which was an advantage. The wide flatlands on both sides were inundated to a distance of fifteen miles. The current ran at a seven- or eight-mile rate and was loaded with floating snags and tree-trunks to repel the invader. In proceeding in a small boat to the fort, Turnbull, in a distance of 120 miles, found but two dry spots on the bank where ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... Temple entrance was a great stone trough full of clear water. There was a long-handled wooden dipper floating on it. ...
— THE JAPANESE TWINS • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... saying this as they surge out in great waves of furs and silks, with black crush hats floating on billows of white wraps among the foam of gossamer scarfs. Through it all is the squawk of the motor horn, the call of the taxi numbers and the inrush of the fresh ...
— Behind the Beyond - and Other Contributions to Human Knowledge • Stephen Leacock
... kin do, Miss." The voice was a wail which rose, swelled out, and cracked like floating ice against the shore of a mighty stream. "Thar ain't nothin' nobody kin do. My John is dead. Even God can't do nothin'. It's over, I tell you. Dead, dead! I can't believe it, but they say it is so. He wasn't well when he left the house this mornin', but he was afeard he'd lose his ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... operator is light and the patient an overweight adult, he can utilize over 80 per cent of his weight by raising his knees from the ground and supporting himself entirely on his toes and the heels of his hands, the latter properly placed on the ends of the floating ribs of the patient. In this manner he can work as effectively as a ...
— Manual for Noncommissioned Officers and Privates of Infantry • War Department
... abroad is vaguely guessed to be the floating of a bond issue for the government, as there has been an alarming shrinkage in the money market, and the Secretary of the Treasury has called upon the Banking interests to relieve the strain ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams
... represented by the forces of the I.G., however free from suspicion might be the mentality and morals of those directing its activities, constitutes, in itself, a serious menace. It is, if you will, a monster camouflaged floating mine in the troubled sea of world peace, which the forces of reconstruction have left unswept. The existence of this giant monopoly raises vital military and economic questions, which are, indeed, ...
— by Victor LeFebure • J. Walker McSpadden
... the low earthwork, the opposite arm of the causeway stretched so invitingly from the Rebel main, the horizon glimmered so low around me,—for it always appears lower to a swimmer than even to an oarsman,—that I seemed floating in some concave globe, some magic crystal, of which I was the enchanted centre. With each little ripple of my steady progress all things hovered and changed; the stars danced and nodded above; where the stars ended, the great Southern fire-flies ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... the wind in the spruce tops he cursed himself. He had thought a crime, and he clenched his mittened hands as he stared at the one window of the cabin. His eyes shifted upward. In the air was a filmy, floating gray. It was smoke coming from the chimney. Peter God ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood
... ready the youngster asked the king to come outside the door. The youngster then gave the king such a kick, which sent him flying up in the air. The bag he threw after him that he might not be without food; and if he has not come down again by this he is floating about with his bag between heaven and earth to this ...
— Folk Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... on her back and went floating with the clouds. While she merely watched them, she thought they kept a level course, but to go with them was like riding on a swollen sea, and as she rose and fell in slow and splendid curves, she discovered differences of colour and quality in ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young
... bind a quantity of flax, moss, and wool loosely round sticks, and to place them near tendrils. The wool must not be dyed, for these tendrils are excessively sensitive to some poisons. The hooked points soon caught hold of the fibres, even loosely floating fibres, and now there was no recoiling; on the contrary, the excitement caused the hooks to penetrate the fibrous mass and to curl inwards, so that each hook caught firmly one or two fibres, or a small bundle ...
— The Movements and Habits of Climbing Plants • Charles Darwin
... The fleets which are floating from one coast to another in the Mediterranean, and which sometimes strike terrour into the harmless inhabitants of an open coast, or threaten, but only threaten, destruction to an unfortified town, I am very far from ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 11. - Parlimentary Debates II. • Samuel Johnson
... building,—dwellings, markets, churches,—until the eye halts with pleasure on the distant blue dome of the Troitzky cathedral, studded with golden stars. Indeed, it is difficult to discover a vista in St. Petersburg which does not charm us with a glimpse of one or more of these cross-crowned domes, floating, bubble-like, in the pale azure of the sky. Though they are far from being as beautiful in form or coloring as those of Moscow, they ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... natural Theism; a parasitical growth which winds itself around the original stem of instinctive faith in a supernatural Power and Presence which pervades the universe. The myths are oral traditions, floating down from that dim; twilight of poetic history, which separates real history, with its fixed chronology, from the unmeasured and unrecorded eternity—faint echoes from that mystic border-land which divides the natural from the ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... Miss Leece's effigy. A cross beam gave a human touch to the shoulders and with the skeleton ready, the business of stuffing an old ulster and hanging it over the figure was simple. Tiny electric bulbs were placed in the eyes and a bonnet tied on the head with a green veil floating behind. Miss Leece, Nora insisted, always wore one growing out of her left ear. There was nothing left to do now, but to place the figure in a legless chair that had been nailed to two poles, and ...
— Grace Harlowe's Plebe Year at High School - The Merry Doings of the Oakdale Freshmen Girls • Jessie Graham Flower
... evaded the invitation by holding her tightly-drawn skirt with both hands, and bending her head forward as if she had not noticed it. The next moment the road, and even the whole outer world, disappeared behind them, and they seemed floating in a choking ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... [Reads.] "About my name... I forgot to explain. You see, Anna sounds like England... or New England... and I am not the least like those places. Father used to see me, as a little tot, diving through the breakers, and floating out in the sea, with the snow-white frigate-birds flashing by overhead; and he said I was the very spirit of the island and the wild, lonely ocean. So he called me Oceana, and that's the ...
— The Naturewoman • Upton Sinclair
... and at least the milliners' windows were radiant with springtime bloom. Children were playing in Norma's street, wrapped and muffled children, wild with joy to be out of doors again, and a tiny frail little moon was floating in the opal sky just above the grim line of roofs. Norma looked up at it, and the pure blowing air touched her hot face, and her heart sang with the sheer ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... the point of confiscation; that is to say, at a "reasonable return," whatever that phrase may mean. It was, indeed, at first extended to semi-private grain elevators on the prairies, to elevators monopolizing the water front of Buffalo, New York, and to floating elevators in New York Harbor, the first and last of which show certainly no element of legal monopoly, while the Buffalo case at most only a geographical one. Still, elevators were the subject of Munn v. Illinois ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... and mermaids quite beyond the possibility of mistake, and men who can call the wind with four knots in a string and words unlearnable, and others who can alter the course of a waterspout by a secret spell, and a captain who made a floating beacon of junk soaked in petroleum in a tar-barrel and set it adrift and stood up on the quarter-deck calling on all the three hundred and sixty-five saints in the calendar out of the Neapolitan almanack he held—and got a breeze, too, for his pains, as Ruggiero adds with a quiet and somewhat ...
— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford
... remarkable shower of small pieces of hay occurred at Monkstown, near Dublin. They appeared floating slowly down from a great height, as if falling from a dark cloud which hung overhead. The pieces picked up were wet, and varied from single blades of grass to tufts weighing one or two ounces. A similar ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... unspeakably hideous, but large and, like the workhouse and the convent, obtruding itself upon the eye. It seems as if the inhabitants of the town must all of them be forced, and that at no distant date, either into religion or pauperism, just as small bodies floating in a pond are sucked into connection with one or other of the logs which lie among them. The shops in the one tortuous street block the footpaths in front of their doors with piles of empty packing-cases. The passenger is saluted, here by a buffet in the face from a ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... Poor floating isle, tost on ill fortune's waves, Ordain'd by fate to be the land of slaves; Shall moving Delos now deep-rooted stand; Thou fix'd of old, be now the moving land! Although the metaphor be worn and stale, Betwixt ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... yesterday. Find my boat and hands ready. The water high and weather fine. Shall set off in two hours. Have therefore no time to give any account of my journey hither. My boat is, properly speaking, a floating house, sixty feet by fourteen, containing dining-room, kitchen with fireplace, and two bedrooms; roofed from stem to stern; steps to go up, and a walk on the top the whole length; glass windows, &c. This edifice costs one hundred and thirty-three dollars, and ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... Colonel, insensibly imbibing one of those Horatian particles that were ever floating in that classic atmosphere—to Darrell medicinal, to Fairthorn morbific. "Years slide away, Willy, mutely as birds skim through air; but when friend meets with friend after absence, each sees the print of their crows' feet on the ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... linseed oil upon a clean sponge or flannel. Wipe polished furniture with silk. Separate dusting-cloths and brushes should be kept for highly polished furniture. When sweeping carpets and dusting walls always cover the furniture until the particles of dust floating in the air settle, then remove the covers, and wipe with a ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... Ekaterino-Nikolsk and Mikhailo-Semenovsk, are strung at intervals of 17 to 20 m. along the whole course of the river; by peasant immigrants, chiefly nonconformists, who are the wealthiest part of the population; and by a floating population of gold miners. Nomadic Tungus (Orochons), Manegres and Golds hunt and fish along the rivers. Steamers ply regularly along the Amur for 6 1/2 months, from Khaharovsk to Stryetensk, on the Shilka terminus of the Trans-Siberian railway; ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... disappeared. Once or twice he had caught a glimpse of her floating round the room with her cousin, but for the past five minutes she has not been en vidence at all. Sir Maurice, moving out of the recess, is touched by a hand from ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford
... who looks you in the face, in a way as if he'd like to say, only bragging ain't genteel, Ain't she a clipper now, and ain't I the man to handle her? Now this ain't the case in a steamer. They ain't vessels, they are more like floating factories; you see the steam machines and the enormous fires, and the clouds of smoke, but you don't visit the rooms where the looms are, that's all. They plough through the sea dead and heavy, like a subsoiler with its eight-horse ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... countries; the sun on its shallows had warmed its waters almost to blood heat; and the beasts found no congenial haunts in these clear shoals. Almost before our tents were up the men were splashing. And always my mental image of that river's beautiful expanse must include round black heads floating like gourds where the ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... of the Ocean Queen, with her steeples and turrets rising from the sea. Venice has no fortifications and needs them not. Her insular position protects her from land attacks, and the shoals prevent the approach of ships of war. Floating batteries therefore and gunboats are her best defence. The road from Fusina to Padua is on the banks of the Brenta the whole way, and is lined with trees. There are a great number of villas on the banks of the Brenta, well built in the best style of architecture, the most of them after the designs ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... of an Egyptian tumbler, going through his performances on the back of a tame crocodile, a barbarous species of entertainment undoubtedly, but not more repulsive than that of the French aeroenaut of last year, floating over Paris on the back of an ostrich. Hereabouts are placed also a small statue of the three-fold Hecate, a Diana found in the Giustiniani Palace at Rome; a bust of Jupiter, conjectured to be a copy from the work of the celebrated sculptor Polycletus, ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... being mistaken for her brother; and she began to cherish hopes that it was her brother whose life this man said he had preserved. And so indeed it was. The stranger, whose name was Antonio, was a sea-captain. He had taken Sebastian up into his ship, when, almost exhausted with fatigue, he was floating on the mast to which he had fastened himself in the storm. Antonio conceived such a friendship for Sebastian, that he resolved to accompany him whithersoever he went; and when the youth expressed a curiosity to visit Orsino's ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... south-west of Villeneuve, between the forest and the river is a well-grown gentian field, and returning from round St. Gingolph to the Chateau one day in the third month after an absence of three days, I saw, as I turned a corner in the descent of the mountain, some object floating in the air above the field. Never was I more startled, and, above all, perplexed: for, beside the object soaring there like a great butterfly, I could see nothing to account for it. It was not long, however, before I came to the conclusion ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... his nearest Mate, With head up-lift above the wave, and eyes That sparkling blazed, his other parts beside Prone on the Flood, extended long and large, Lay floating ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... armed, but the commander of the American vessel did not hesitate an instant. He cleared his ship for action and trained his guns on her. Just then she hoisted English colors and dipped them in salute to the stars and stripes that were floating above the Nashville. She proved to be the Talbot, an English ship cruising in those waters. The whole affair was a splendid display of courage on the part of the Nashville in clearing ship and showing fight to the big English gunboat. Every man on the American ship knew that if the stranger ...
— Young Peoples' History of the War with Spain • Prescott Holmes
... home along the cliff road at sunset. Young Donald paused on the terrace before entering the house, and, stirred by some half-forgotten memory, he glanced across the bight to the little white house far below on the Sawdust Pile. The flag was floating from the cupola, but even as he looked, it ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... 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 universe ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... fruitful source; And gulfy Simois, rolling to the main(224) Helmets, and shields, and godlike heroes slain: These, turn'd by Phoebus from their wonted ways, Deluged the rampire nine continual days; The weight of waters saps the yielding wall, And to the sea the floating bulwarks fall. Incessant cataracts the Thunderer pours, And half the skies descend in sluicy showers. The god of ocean, marching stern before, With his huge trident wounds the trembling shore, ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... But the "floating feast" pleased Caesar, for it was something new. Besides, such exquisite dishes were served that the imagination of Apicius would have failed at sight of them, and wines of so many kinds that Otho, who ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... the lad never knew; all he could comprehend was that he was floating upon something in the midst of a wildly tempestuous sea, and that the wind and spray seemed to have combined to tear him from where his feeble efforts were aided by a ...
— Yussuf the Guide - The Mountain Bandits; Strange Adventure in Asia Minor • George Manville Fenn
... sight. They had drifted south out of men's knowledge. They failed to attract the attention of a lonely whaler, and very soon the edge of the polar ice-cap rose from the sea and closed the southern horizon like a wall. One morning they were alarmed by finding themselves floating amongst detached pieces of ice. But the fear of sinking passed away like their vigour, like their hopes; the shocks of the floes knocking against the ship's side could not rouse them from their apathy: and the Borgmester Dahl drifted ...
— Falk • Joseph Conrad
... speculations with which I have no concern; it is sufficient for us to know that all human effort had never seemed to her so barren and thankless as on that fatal afternoon. Her eyes rested on the boats she saw in the distance, and she wondered if in one of them Verena were floating to her fate; but so far from straining forward to beckon her home she almost wished that she might glide away for ever, that she might never see her again, never undergo the horrible details of a more deliberate separation. Olive lived over, in her miserable musings, her life for ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James
... through the gateway as he fled, and just saw a wild whirl of Goths and girls, spinning madly round the court in the world-old Teutonic waltz; while, high above their heads, in the uplifted arms of the mighty Amal, was tossing the beautiful figure of Pelagia, tearing the garland from her floating hair to pelt the dancers with its roses. And that might be his sister! He hid his face and fled, and the gate shut out the revellers from his eyes; and it is high time that it should shut ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... had lost their lives in addition to the poor fellow who was first drowned. Fifty blacks had been rescued; as many more possibly had been drowned, with numerous children whose bodies had been seen floating about, while many had been dragged off, to undergo fearful sufferings, if not a cruel death, by ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... Christian host, had seen the enemy in force, and they eagerly watched the vast array. It was picturesque in the extreme, with a variety and brightness of color rivaling that of the Christian host. In banners and pennons the latter made a braver show; but the floating robes of the infidel showed a far brighter mass of color than the steel armor of ...
— The Boy Knight • G.A. Henty
... many heads butts me away.—Nay, mother, Where is your ancient courage? you were us'd To say extremities was the trier of spirits; That common chances common men could bear; That when the sea was calm all boats alike Show'd mastership in floating; fortune's blows, When most struck home, being gentle wounded, craves A noble cunning; you were us'd to load me With precepts that would make invincible ...
— The Tragedy of Coriolanus • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... hotel where Kathie and I chanced to be staying, and never shall I forget my first sight of Charmion Fane as she trailed into the dining-room and seated herself at a small table opposite our own. She was so tall and pale and shadowy in the floating grey chiffon cloak that covered her white dress, she lay back in her chair with such languor, and drooped her heavy eyelids with an air of such superfine indifference to her fellow-men, that Kathie and I decided then and there that she was succumbing to the effects of a dangerous operation, ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... dominated by a feverish thirst. 'We sat,' he says, 'in a little huddled group, saying very little, and the men forward were mere knots of silent endurance. Our only continuing sound was the persistent mewing of a cat one of the men had rescued from a floating hayrick near Zaandam. We kept a southward course by a watch-chain compass ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... waste our time like a lot of fools making military guesses. If I'm not too old to dance to the tune of the shells I'm not too old to dance to the tune of the fiddle and the bow. That's a glorious air floating in from the ballroom. I think I can show some of these youngsters like Kenton here ...
— The Shades of the Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... "male oligarchy," as she called it. "I really believe I shall explode," she wrote Clara Colby, "if some of you young women don't wake up and raise your voice in protest.... I wonder if when I am under the sod—or cremated and floating in the air—I shall have to stir you and others up. How can you not be all ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... Really a very simple one. Before his time the pursuit of aeronautics had taken two divergent lines, and had developed on the one hand balloons—large apparatus lighter than air, easy in ascent, and comparatively safe in descent, but floating helplessly before any breeze that took them; and on the other, flying machines that flew only in theory—vast flat structures heavier than air, propelled and kept up by heavy engines and for the most part smashing at the first ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells |
