"Perceptible" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... consternation, by announcing that he would be obliged to return to London on that very day, having received a letter, by the morning's post, which left him no choice. The very butler paused, for a perceptible period, while handing ham and eggs to the guest. Forks and knives were laid ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... mouth issuing out of the tobacco-shop, from which appearance he augured that another fine week for the ducks was approaching, and that rain would certainly ensue. He furthermore took occasion to apologize for any negligence that might be perceptible in his dress, on the ground that last night he had had 'the sun very strong in his eyes'; by which expression he was understood to convey to his hearers in the most delicate manner possible, the information that he had been ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... assay. By the most gentle application of the flame, it is immediately volatilized, and if touched for a moment with the reducing flame, it disappears, tinging the flame pale blue. During volatilization a strong garlic odor is distinctly perceptible, very characteristic of arsenic, and by which its presence in any compound may ...
— A System of Instruction in the Practical Use of the Blowpipe • Anonymous
... Gow developed the tale as far as his mental and moral reach permitted there were perceptible gaps between his facts, and I had the sense that the deeper meaning of the story was in the gaps. But one phrase stuck in my memory and served as the nucleus about which I grouped my subsequent inferences: "Guess he's been in ...
— Ethan Frome • Edith Wharton
... "Given the hardly perceptible wearing of water and time, a canyon a mile deep, and many hundreds of miles long, has resulted from the flowing of a stream. Given glacial 'abrasion' and time enough, then valleys of rounded section and firths and lake-basins of a particular kind probably resulted from ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... old man and was with him at that moment; and this fact made Ralph say to himself that, after all, what his mother wanted was just easy occasion. The finer natures were those that shone at the larger times. Isabel went to her own room, noting throughout the house that perceptible hush which precedes a crisis. At the end of an hour, however, she came downstairs in search of her aunt, whom she wished to ask about Mr. Touchett. She went into the library, but Mrs. Touchett was not there, and as the weather, which had been damp and ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... tenement-house dweller running an early morning errand, hoping thus to escape the curiosity that a well-dressed lady might encounter if seen on the street at so early an hour. The storm and the clouds had gone, but the air was moist from the recent rain. When she sallied forth no dawn was perceptible, though the street lamps were most of them already out. Just as the sky above Greenpoint began to glow and the reeking streets took on a little gray, Phillida entered the stairway up which she stumbled in black darkness ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... unmistakably denoted the rise in the level of the Albert N'yanza at that season (say 1st Nov.). Above the falls, in N. lat. 3 degrees 32", there is very little current in the broad deep Nile; and in about N. lat. 3 degrees this river is several miles in width, with no perceptible stream. In those propitious calms the Pistia Stratiotes grows in vast masses along the shores, and the annual rise of the lake creates a current which carries the plants towards the ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... upright on his head, in his quaint little costume, with his upturned toes and ruffled hands, looked quite like a true denizen of fairy land. Certain it is that the man who stood under the shadow of the oak gave a perceptible start when he saw the fairy and brownie. For a moment the old belief of his early childhood flashed through his brain, then he recognised Nell and Boris, and coming to meet them, he took ...
— Red Rose and Tiger Lily - or, In a Wider World • L. T. Meade
... geniality that is most desirable for little people. Apropos of nonsense, we remember Leigh Hunt, who says that there are two kinds of nonsense, one resulting from a superabundance of ideas, the other from a want of them. Style in the hands of some writers is like war-paint to the savage—of no perceptible value unless it is laid on thick. Our little ones begin too often on cheap and tawdry stories in one or two syllables, where pictures in primary colors try their best to atone for lack of matter. Then they enter on a prolonged series of children's books, some of them written by people ...
— Children's Rights and Others • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... between the tone and language of the court and the town was about as perceptible as that between Paris and the provinces." (De Tilly, "Memoires," ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... proposal met with such strong opposition that she resigned the idea. She dressed herself early in a pretty chamber gown of pink silk trimmed with minever; but in spite of the rosy color, the pallor of her sickness and long confinement was very perceptible. The train that was to bring John Campbell reached Ayr at four o'clock, and Maggie saw the carriage hurrying off to meet it, as she went to her room to dress for dinner. In less than an hour there was the stir of an arrival, and John Campbell's slow, heavy tread ...
— A Daughter of Fife • Amelia Edith Barr
... settlement of the middle colonies completed, for connecting these disjoined members, and forming one consolidated whole, capable of moving, and acting in concert. This gradual change, unobserved in its commencement, had now become too perceptible to be longer overlooked; and, henceforward, the efforts of the colonies, were in a great measure combined, and directed ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 1 (of 5) • John Marshall
... English sailors like the best. Dick saw several of his shipmates knocked over, and one poor boy, with whom he had just been talking, fell close to his side. He knelt down to help him, but not a movement was perceptible. He took his hand; it fell on the deck. The boy ...
— The Rival Crusoes • W.H.G. Kingston
... to Quebec and Winnipeg. Successful attempts were afterwards made to control the liquor traffic, not by sudden prohibition, which always increased the evil, but by common sense methods, necessarily somewhat slow, but sure. When the Society had been at work ten years, there was a very perceptible diminution in the amount of crime and smaller offences in all their spheres of action. Police forces could be decreased, and a prison here and there closed. This had a tendency to lessen the rates, so the taxpayer ...
— The Dominion in 1983 • Ralph Centennius
... speeds there is a perceptible equality between the theoretic curve and the curve of the fast boat; but, starting from 16 kilometers, the stress diminishes. The greater does the speed become, the more considerable is the diminution ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 385, May 19, 1883 • Various
... us—high, round hills, as yellow as brass when they are not drenched with fog. In the twilight we watched the fog roll in, trailing its lace-like skirts among the highland forests. How still the river was! Not a ripple disturbed it; there was no perceptible current, for after the winter floods subside, the sea throws up a wall of sand that chokes the stream, and the waters slowly gather until there is volume enough to clear it. Then come the rains and the floods, in which ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... Letters, that German prince describes a bout with H.R.H., who in his best time was such a powerful toper that "six bottles of claret after dinner scarce made a perceptible change in ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... gentle as the breathing of a child. In glide and turn, in balance and smoothness, in that lift which was scarcely motion, there was the suggestion of frenzy restrained, of passion lulled, which emanates from the barely perceptible heave of a slumbering summer sea. It was dreamy to a charm; it was graceful to the point at which the eye begins to sicken of gracefulness; it was monotonous with the force of a necromantic spell. It was soothing; it also ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... order of time. Nevertheless, they do not hold that the formlessness of matter implies the total absence of form, since heaven, earth, and water already existed, since these three are named as already clearly perceptible to the senses; rather they understand by formlessness the want of due distinction and of perfect beauty, and in respect of these three Scripture mentions three kinds of formlessness. Heaven, the highest of them, was without form so long as "darkness" filled it, because ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... unusual in grass, leaves, mud, or sand might pass unnoted by. At intervals along the banks lay wide beds of solid rock, or pebbles mixed with mud or sand, left high and dry by the summer shrinking of the stream, where the Indians might easily have quitted the water without leaving a trace perceptible to the eye. At such places Burl would call Grumbo over to help the eye with the more unerring nose, when, having satisfied themselves that the trail had not yet left the water, the dog, swimming and wading, would return to his side, and ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... though I had little hope of clearing it. I lifted him a little on the snaffle, gave him the spur just as he reached the brink, and with a long and swinging leap, so easy that its motion was in truth scarce perceptible, he swept across it; before I had the time to think, we were again going at our best pace almost among ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... the State reports. Cap is a light yellow, darker in the centre, 1/4 inch to 1 inch broad, bell-shaped, sticky, shiny when dry, even. Stem sometimes 4 inches long, slender, straight, dry, base almost club-shaped. Ring scarcely perceptible, but forming a whitish zone, shining, persistent, apex of stem whitish, and slightly striate. Gills dark gray, almost blackish, the margin paler, adfixed, thin. We found a great many in one place, of all ...
— Among the Mushrooms - A Guide For Beginners • Ellen M. Dallas and Caroline A. Burgin
... of the ladies, and the shouts of the multitude. Napoleon, wearily leaning back in the open barouche, drawn by six richly-caparisoned horses, thanked the people with an indifferent wave of his hand, and saluted the ladies with a scarcely perceptible nod. His countenance was immovable, and the public excitement was unable to betray him into the faintest sign of gratification. The noisy welcome seemed as stale to him as some old song which he had heard ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... years of their marriage slipped by, but toward the end with a perceptible brightening of the prospect in every direction. Not in one day, nor in one week, did the change come; it was just that things went well for Jim at the office, that the children were daily growing less helpless and more enchanting, that Anne was beginning to ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris
... and her arms around his neck, Marian, at parting, told Martin how much she loved him and always had loved him. It was true, there was a perceptible halt midway in her assertion, which she glossed over with more tears and kisses and incoherent stammerings, and which Martin inferred to be her appeal for forgiveness for the time she had lacked faith in him and insisted ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... good large augre, till the tree be quite perforated: Then by making a second hole within the first, fitted with a lesser pipe, the interior heart-sap may be drawn apart, and examin'd by weight, quantity, colour, distillation, &c. and if no difference perceptible be detected the presumption will be greater, that the difference of heart and sap in timber, is not from the saps plenty or penury, but the season; and then possibly, the very season of squaring, ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... that have dropped into such sudden, suspicious silence at his approach—I can see him start perceptibly, can see his gray eyes dart with lightning quickness from Musgrave to me, and from me to Musgrave; and in his voice there is to me an equally perceptible tone of ice-coldness; but to an ordinary observer it would seem the greeting, neither more nor less warm, exchanged between two moderately friendly acquaintances meeting ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... lasted until luncheon was served. Giovanni put in an appearance, and Derby was pressed to stay. As di Valdo and the American met, there was a barely perceptible coldness under the Italian's good manners, while Derby's greeting showed a momentary curiosity. Two more sharply contrasted beings could hardly have been brought together. But gradually Giovanni also became interested in the mining plans, and, as the reason ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... when the need of such discipline is urgent, but howsoever impregnable the mask, the strain of wearing it is felt, and relief shows itself in an unguarded moment. At the farther end of the room there was a mirror above the fireplace, and as he turned his back on Fenley, by a hardly perceptible inclination of his head he could catch the reflection of his ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... was just perceptible before Thresk spoke again. But he had his face under control. He took the stroke without flinching. He turned to Dick with ...
— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason
... anguish as though it were ointment delicately laid on a bodily wound. Not an ache, even, left for reminder! but healing peace at a stroke, and in the hush of it small thrills awaking, stirring, soft ripples scarcely perceptible, stealing, hesitating, until overtaken by reinforcements of bliss and urged in a flood, bathing ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... resounded through the cavern, and breathless, rapid, terrified, a fox passed like a flash of lightning before the fugitives, leaped over the boat and disappeared, leaving behind its sour scent, which was perceptible for several seconds under the low vaults of ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... lips; her eyes remained closed; she gave no sign of life, save her barely perceptible breathing. It made me sick at heart just to look at her; so near, and ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... not speak angrily, he even smiled; but the disquietude of his heart was perceptible in the trembling of his voice. And he added with his ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... views, aims, habits and manners, their religious creeds and forms of worship,—gaining experience how various yet how alike men are, how low-minded, how bad, how opposed, yet how confident in their opinions; all this exerts a perceptible influence upon the mind, which it is impossible to mistake, be it good or be it bad, and ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... was especially felt in leaning against the walls in the upper apartments when the wind was blowing fresh, or when the house was struck by a sea or by a boat coming suddenly against it, and might be compared to that which is perceptible in a common house upon the slamming of particular doors, or when a carriage makes a rattling noise in passing along the streets. But this effect is attended with no real danger. The late eminent Professor Robison told Mr. Stevenson that when he visited ...
— Smeaton and Lighthouses - A Popular Biography, with an Historical Introduction and Sequel • John Smeaton
... the calm demeanor of Miss Whedell; but, strong in his purpose, he walked toward the door, followed by the father. As he passed into the entry, he bowed coldly to the lady of his heart, and drew from her a scarcely perceptible nod. ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... they are approached, this tower appears largest when seen from afar, and seems less as you come nearer. This may be accounted for, as the tower stands in a very large plain, and with its surrounding ruins forms the only perceptible object; so that from a distance the tower and the mountains formed of its ruins make a greater shew than it is found ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... cross, meet, and melt into each other. Inertia gives place to motion, it spreads, accelerates and circulates. The waves of the lake undulate and swell like a bosom touched by love. The tears of the dew, motionless as those of tenderness, grow more and more perceptible, one after another they are seen glittering on the humid herbs, diamonds waiting for the sun to paint with rainbow-tints their vivid scintillations. The gigantic fan of light in the East is ever opening larger and wider. Spangles of silver, borders of scarlet, ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... healthy growth through all conceivable time. Nothing is worth looking at which is seen either too obviously or with too much difficulty. Nothing is worth doing or well done which is not done fairly easily, and some little deficiency of effort is more pardonable than any very perceptible excess; for virtue has ever erred rather on the side of self-indulgence than of asceticism, and well-being has ever advanced through the pleasures rather ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... her adversary much injury. The Lackawanna, Captain Marchand, was the next vessel to strike her, which she did at full speed; but though her stem was cut and crushed to the plank-ends for the distance of three feet above the water's edge to five feet below, the only perceptible effect on the ram was to give her ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various
... happenings was immediately perceptible in the resumed discussion on the Home Rule Bill. Mr. Dillon, speaking on the second day, said: "Yesterday for the first time I heard this question debated in a spirit of reasonableness and conciliation and with an evident desire on both ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... perceptible sarcasm in her voice, but Dinah coloured a little and went at once to ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... own bright hair whenever her sunbonnet declined to stay on, which happened frequently. The new object lent this tree a new interest of its own, and boys being an untiring species of animals the sport went on with no perceptible flagging. But when this tree too was about half cleared, Faith withdrew a little from the busy rush and bustle, left the chestnuts and chestnut burrs, and sat down on the bank to rest and look. Her eye wandered to the further woodland, softest of all in hazy veils; to the nearer brilliant ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... came abreast of me, passed me, and I felt that my surmise had been wrong. I saw Bristol, from farther up the room, turn and look back. Something attracted his trained eye, I suppose, which was not perceptible to me. But he suddenly came striding along. Obviously he was pursuing the old man, who was just about to leave the apartment. Seeing that the latter had reached the doorway, Bristol ...
— The Quest of the Sacred Slipper • Sax Rohmer
... moment of its inception, it would afterwards be gradually improved as variations of more and more utility presented themselves, until not only would finer and finer degrees of difference between light and shade become perceptible, but even the outlines of solid bodies would begin to be appreciated. And so on, stage by stage, till from an ordinary nerve-ending in the skin is evolved the eye of ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes
... fine needle of crystallization forms in the transparent fluid; when the impulse of the jellying principle begins to work on the fruit-juice, and the frost principle to inform the water atoms. These fateful moments are not always perceptible to our dull apprehensions, but none the less do they exist; and they are apt to take us by surprise, because we have not detected the fine gradual chain of preparation which has made ...
— In the High Valley - Being the fifth and last volume of the Katy Did series • Susan Coolidge
... These being too imperfect to be printed alone, his friends inserted them in the memorial, where they seemed best to cohere. The memorial had been fairly copied, but did not appear to have been examined or corrected, as some trifling errors of the transcriber were perceptible in it. The manuscript of the fragments was a rough draft from the author's own hand, much ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... are technical terms in philosophy. According to their etymology, (from transcendere,) they signify that which goes beyond a certain limit; in philosophy, that which goes beyond, or transcends, the circle of experience, or of what is perceptible by the senses. Properly speaking, all philosophy is in this sense transcendental, because all philosophical investigations rise above the sensual, even if they start from that which is perceptible by the senses. But philosophical inquiries are to ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... but before their material effect. The decrees of expulsion of eighty-four representatives of the people, published on January 6 in the Moniteur, revolted public sentiment. Fast bound as France was, the shudder was perceptible. The 2nd of December was not long past; there was danger in popular excitement. Louis Bonaparte understood this. Next day a second decree of expulsion was to have appeared, containing eight hundred names. Louis Bonaparte had the proof brought ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... obeyed. Gerard was still occupying the centre of the diamond, holding the ball aloft while his meditative gaze apparently dwelt on the batsman. There was scarcely a perceptible turn of his brown head, yet as the two in the car watched, the impromptu pitcher's glance flashed from behind his uplifted arm and he whirled in a half-circle to hurl the unexpected ball straight across the diamond ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram
... limit in the second century, when the influence of Christianity becomes perceptible, we should form our judgment of the politics of antiquity by its actual legislation, our estimate would be low. The prevailing notions of freedom were imperfect, and the endeavours to realise them were ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... tells his wife; "no, nothing but the loss of a limb would have kept me from my duty, and I believe my exertions conduced to preserve me in this general mortality." In his cheery letters, now, no trace is perceptible of the fretful, complaining temper, which impaired, though it did not destroy, the self-devotion of his later career. No other mistress at this time contended with honor for the possession of his heart; no other place than the post of duty before Calvi distracted his desires, or appealed ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... piece, (which he had torn from a lime-cask,) reeking with blood, presenting the picture of a murderer bestained with the blood of his victim. But the poor sufferer's punishment had wasted his strength,—his moans had become so faint as to be scarcely perceptible. His posteriors were so cut and mangled that we could compare them to nothing but a piece of bullock's-liver, with its tenacity torn by craven dogs. His body was in a profuse perspiration, the sweat running from his neck and shoulders, while the blood streamed ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... taken up I was thought to be dead. I was perfectly white, and the physician who first saw me said that no pulse was perceptible. But after a time consciousness returned; the wounds, though painful, were none of them dangerous, and the most alarming effects of the accident passed away. My old nurse cared for me tenderly day and night, and my father, who had been ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... hotly. That slighting reference to gentlemen adventurers, with just a perceptible emphasis of the adventurers, was not ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... chair and examined the transom sill. The dust was undisturbed. He inspected the keyhole; sniffed; stood up, bent and sniffed again. It was an odor totally unknown to him. He stuffed the corner of his fresh handkerchief into the keyhole, drew it out and sniffed that. Barely perceptible. He wrapped the corner into the heart of the handkerchief, and put it back into his pocket. Some powerful narcotic had been forced into the room through the keyhole. This would account for the prince's headache. These ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath
... clattering, till distance rendered its noise inaudible, and its rapid progress only perceptible to the eye, the vehicle wound its way along the road, almost hidden in a cloud of dust: now wholly disappearing, and now becoming visible again, as intervening objects, or the intricacies of the way, permitted. It was not until even the dusty cloud was no ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... influence in the town and being probably the only man of superior intellect interested in the internal affairs of the community, was the proper and most effectual mediator between the people and their temporal rulers. Hence arose that important influence of the bishops which was to have so perceptible an effect on the subsequent development of the principles of liberty in ...
— The Communes Of Lombardy From The VI. To The X. Century • William Klapp Williams
... though that influence appears strongly in the age immediately succeeding ours, and helps to produce the greatest achievements of the language, it may be questioned whether its results were wholly beneficial. In the earliest Italian, or rather Sicilian, poetry quite different influences are perceptible. One of them—the influence of the literatures of France, both Southern and Northern—is quite certain and incontestable. The intercourse between the various Romance-speaking nations surrounding the western Mediterranean was always close; and the development of Provencal literature far anticipated, ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... stainless whiteness. And yet, as we approach them, every islanded cup that floats in lonely dignity, apart from the multitude, appears as perfect in itself, couched in white expanded perfection, its reflection taking a faint glory of pink that is scarcely perceptible in the flower. As we glide gently among them, the air grows fragrant, and a stray breeze flaps the leaves, as if to welcome us. Each floating flower becomes suddenly a ship at anchor, or rather seems beating up against the summer wind, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... constitution that the Congress had prepared, and, after obtaining from that body an appointment to supreme command, dissolved the Congress without further ado. Unfortunately none of these radical measures had any perceptible effect upon the military situation. Though Bolivar gathered together an army made up of Colombians, Peruvians, and remnants of San Martin's force, many months elapsed before he could venture upon a serious campaign. Then events in Spain played into his hands. The reaction that had followed the ...
— The Hispanic Nations of the New World - Volume 50 in The Chronicles Of America Series • William R. Shepherd
... it being that it increases the number of the pulse, but lessens the force of the heart. 3. My personal experience of such quantities of wine as two or more glasses of port a day at my age (72) is that it produces no perceptible or measurable effect when taken for, say, three weeks or a month at a time, when compared with the like period of total abstinence. 4. It may be said in favour of temperance or even of extreme abstinence, that some of those men who have done most ...
— Study and Stimulants • A. Arthur Reade
... as the fleet had watered, they again made sail, and again did Philip's agitation become perceptible. With a favouring breeze, however, they rounded the Cape, passed by Madagascar, and arrived in the Indian Seas, when the Batavia parted company with the rest of the fleet, which steered to Cambroon and ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... were hidden behind the brick stacks which were square blocks of burned clay upon which the British shells burst without perceptible effect. The shells that went over the stacks, however, did much damage. Beyond the brick field to the north were the ruins of farm buildings which were also hiding places for the Germans and their machine guns. All the buildings back of the German line had been turned into ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 12) - Neuve Chapelle, Battle of Ypres, Przemysl, Mazurian Lakes • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... came out and the wind died. Though its rays were feeble at that time of year, their contrast with the bleakness that had prevailed during the morning threw a perceptible warmth into the crouching men. Alfred succeeded, too, in wriggling a morsel of raw bacon from the pack, which the two men shared. But the cartridges were running ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White
... devised plan with an unusual resolution. Arguing, explaining, suggesting, convincing, persuading, the hours slipped away, until at ten o'clock at night there came a sudden change in the weather, perceptible even to those in the house. Washington ran eagerly to the door and opened it. Followed by the general officers, he stepped out into the night. It was dark and cloudy, no moon or stars even, and growing colder every moment under ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... that one yonder." He was getting so romantically attached to Christminster that, like a young lover alluding to his mistress, he felt bashful at mentioning its name again. He pointed to the light in the sky—hardly perceptible ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... at what displeases them than to feel grateful to any one for good treatment, and think that they have paid their advocates in full with wages, whereas they are determined to give those who oppose them at law a perceptible setback: but furthermore he invited very bitter enemies by always striving to get the better of even the strongest men and by always employing an unbridled and excessive frankness of speech to all alike; he was in ...
— Dio's Rome • Cassius Dio
... declarations, and each perhaps without any distinct termination of its views—were agitating the nation; to minds heated with political contest they supplied cooler and more inoffensive reflections; and it is said by Addison, in a subsequent work, that they had a perceptible influence upon the conversation of that time, and taught the frolic and the gay to unite merriment with decency—an effect which they can never wholly lose while they continue to be among the first books by which both sexes are initiated in the ...
— Lives of the Poets: Addison, Savage, and Swift • Samuel Johnson
... noiselessly pacing backwards and forwards in the semi-obscurity. By the light of the candle I saw an elderly man with good features and a refined, intelligent and even attractive face, but dreadfully emaciated, bloodless and sallow. He lay quite motionless except for the scarcely perceptible rise and fall of his chest; his eyes were nearly closed, his features relaxed, and, though he was not actually asleep, he seemed to be in a dreamy, somnolent, lethargic state, as if under ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... regular and at others extremely fluctuating. We have noticed however, that at full moon and new moon, the tides change once a day for eight or ten days, while during the remainder of the time there is hardly any change perceptible. The currents set almost invariably in one direction, namely toward Lake Michigan, and they almost invariably set against the ...
— Old Mackinaw - The Fortress of the Lakes and its Surroundings • W. P. Strickland
... of them at home. The log cabin was rapidly disappearing, the frame cottages were being built with more neatness and taste, and garish colors were becoming things of the past. Indeed, a quick uplift through all the mountains was perceptible to any observant eye that had known and knew now the hills. To the law-makers at the capital and to the men of law and business in the Blue-grass, that change was plain when they came into conflict with the lawyers and bankers and merchants of the highlands, for they found this new hillsman ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... only been removed for a few feet round the camp, and the figure of a man emerged bearing in one hand a gun, and in the other a bird which he had shot. He was evidently an Englishman, and not long from Europe, by the bloom of the skin, which was perceptible in spite of the superficial tan. His face was at the moment flushed with heat; but the clear blue eyes and delicate features lost none ...
— Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland • Olive Schreiner
... had crossed here had been hurried and incautious. One foot had missed, slipped or trailed, and its covering was soaking wet as it followed on up the bank. It was still wet enough to leave, as the lantern determined, a perceptible trace on the broad stepping-stones just below the placid pool at the ford, where the shores were low and sandy again—so wet, in fact, that the stain toward the opposite bank and on the farthermost stone became a splash so dark that the foremost ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... owe to metre acting on thought; for I do not believe that I ever penned any poetry in my life unless it was to a tune; and even in this prose which I now write there is ever and anon a cadence as of a brook running along, then rising, anon falling, perceptible to me though not to you, yet which has many a time been noted down by critics speaking gently of my work. This induced me to learn betimes an incredible number of songs; in fact, at the age of ten or eleven I had most of Percy's "Relics" by heart. This naturally ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... From this hill I could also see that the Musgrave chain still ran on to the west; though broken and parted in masses, it rose again into high mounts and points. This continuation is called the Mann Range. Near the foot of the round hill I saw a small flat piece of rock, barely perceptible among the grass; on it was an old native fireplace and a few dead sticks. On inspection there proved to be two fine little holes or basins in the solid rock, with ample water for all my horses. Scrub and triodia existed in the neighbourhood, ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... After a perceptible pause, he said quietly: "Remember, Roy, just because she's unique, she can't be taken as representative. She naturally stands for India in your eyes. But no country can produce beings of her quality ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... crumbling to pieces on their removal, the writer had opportunity to observe their strong resemblance to the small orthocephalic crania which he had exhumed from mounds in Michigan. The same resemblance was perceptible in the other crania belonging to this mound. The small, narrow, retreating frontal, prominent parietal protuberances, rather protuberant occipital, which was not in the least compressed, the well-defined supraciliary ridges, and the superior border of the ...
— An introduction to the mortuary customs of the North American Indians • H. C. Yarrow
... glorious imagery, said of its author, "The man who wrote that hymn must have had the finest ear imaginable, for on account of the peculiar measure, none but a person of equal musical and poetic taste could have produced the harmony perceptible in the verse." ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... than a balloon would allow one to escape from its taint. But he noticed that even at this slight elevation he had got free from the noise of the traffic. It would continue—a crashing roar—for hours, and yet it was now scarcely perceptible. Listening attentively he heard it—just a crackling murmur, a curious muffled rhythm, as of drums beaten by an army of drummers ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... main sorts of rhythmic prose may be distinguished: (1) characteristic prose, or that in which no regularity (coincidence) is easily appreciable; (2) cadenced prose, or that in which the regularity is perceptible, but unobtrusive, and (3) metrical prose, or that in which the regularity is so noticeable as to be unpleasing. No very clear lines can be drawn; nor should one try to classify more than brief passages in one group or another. And, ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... is among those political phenomena which occur not unfrequently in the course of human affairs, and which the statesman can never safely disregard. When real ills are felt, there is something positive and perceptible to which the judgment may be directed, the actual extent of which may be ascertained, and the cause of which may be discerned. But when the mind, inflamed by supposititious dangers, gives a full loose to the imagination, and fastens upon some object with which ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 5 (of 5) • John Marshall
... The various circumstances that had been thought causes for congratulation last year were to be rejoiced over still. Mr Maxwell was holding his own among them. His sermons were admired as much as ever. The various meetings were well attended; there was no perceptible falling off in the subscription-list, and many of the North Gore people were as regular in their attendance, and to all appearance as loyal to church interests as could be desired. Still it was not so pleasant or so prosperous a winter as the last ...
— David Fleming's Forgiveness • Margaret Murray Robertson
... expanded or enlarged to cover a wide field, and they can be contracted or shrunk up into insignificance, but they cannot be created, they must be pre-existent; they were in the non-magnetised steel all the time, though they were so small and ill-arranged that they had no perceptible effect whatever; they constituted a potentiality for magnetism; they existed as molecular closed curves or loops, which, by the operation called magnetisation, could, some of them, be opened out into loops of finite area and spread out into space, where they are called "lines ...
— Life and Matter - A Criticism of Professor Haeckel's 'Riddle of the Universe' • Oliver Lodge
... having neither Greek nor Turk on it; but I hear that the Captain Pacha is going to adopt the miserable and contemptible policy of destroying its harbour, and then taking no more regard of the Island. I must say the want of unanimity in the Greek against the common enemy is here too perceptible. The Hydriotes well knew that Psara was soon to be attack'd and it was in their power to have saved it, but its having been in former days a rival island in commerce, and was now a rival island in achievements in war, they delay'd sending their ships until it was too late. There were ...
— Charles Philip Yorke, Fourth Earl of Hardwicke, Vice-Admiral R.N. - A Memoir • Lady Biddulph of Ledbury
... sixty miles distant. Though a tolerably bright day, there was a slight mist, and we were just able to discern the snowy summit of "Long's peak," ("les deux oreilles" of the Canadians,) showing like a cloud near the horizon. I found it easily distinguishable, there being a perceptible difference in its appearance from the white clouds that were floating about the sky. I was pleased to find that among the traders the name of "Long's peak" had been adopted and become familiar in the country. In the ravines near this place, a ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont
... demurely, but there was a perceptible something in her voice which might have warned the man, had he been in the habit of taking warning from anything, which, however, was not the case. It was one of his weaknesses that he seldom thought about what he did until he was compelled ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss
... services will not, it seems, be required—a neighboring attorney having performed the necessary duty—something, I believe, relative to the will of the dying lady. We will speak further together by and by. In the meantime," continued Dr. Curteis, with a perceptible tremor in his voice, "it will do neither of us any harm to witness the closing scene of the life of Mary Rawdon, whom you and I twenty years ago worshipped as one of the gentlest and most beautiful of beings with ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... are drawn out and united by the hind legs." From this we see that two special glands, capable of secreting a soft material that can be readily drawn into the finest threads of the greatest strength, requiring no perceptible time for drying, and two to four spinnerets perforated by more than a thousand of the smallest apertures, and hind legs modified so that they can be used to draw out the web through the spinnerets, and ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner
... new, sprinkle them with salt and water; otherwise, they overload the horse's stomach. Chopped straw mixed with oats, in the proportion of a third of straw or hay, is a good food for horses in full work; and carrots, of which horses are remarkably fond, have a perceptible effect in a short time on the gloss ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... stout tarpaulin to be lashed over the engine-room hatch, thus preventing any more water from passing down into the hold there in any perceptible quantity; still, the carrying away of the bulwarks and chain-plates had strained the ship very much on the port side, and when the carpenter sounded the well at eight bells the ship was found to be leaking fast, having already a depth of ...
— Teddy - The Story of a Little Pickle • J. C. Hutcheson
... acknowledged. The language which they spoke was called after them the Romance-Wallon, or rustic Romance, which was at first very much the same throughout France, except that as it extended southward the Latin prevailed, and in the north the German was more perceptible. These differences increased, and the languages rapidly grew more dissimilar. The people of the south called themselves Romans- provencaux, while the northern tribes added to the name of Romans, which they had assumed, that of Wallons, which they ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... them; for his own weight would have been too great for it. The Knight and Squire followed closely on the first two carriages. They were flying, on starting, somewhat too high; but Ernest hauled in the lines, and the effect was soon perceptible. On went their daddy-long-legs, as he and Ellis called their car, and soon got ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... met with a gladness that was only too perceptible. Every gentleman emitted a sigh of relief, and half started, as if to take ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 1 • Various
... ordered his luggage into the porter's care in the hall below before leaving, and that nothing remained in his room but a few toilet articles and the fateful portmanteau. The hours passed slowly. Owing to that perpetual twilight in which he had passed the day, there seemed no perceptible flight of time, and at eleven o'clock, the captain not arriving, he determined to wait in the latter's room so as to be sure not to miss him. Twelve o'clock boomed from an adjacent invisible steeple, ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... to the serpent, gave Mary as a bride to the Holy Spirit. In other nations it has been the same down to our day." In this extract, the Jewish nation and the Bible are referred to in the same tone that we refer to Mahommedans and to the Koran. Is not this tendency perceptible elsewhere? In looking at woman, we ignore the Bible, and God, and history, and talk of her as though the past had no influence with the present and future. The Bible, God, and history have to do with the present and the future, and whoever studies history has ...
— The True Woman • Justin D. Fulton
... Like Fleetwood, he cried in the bitterness of his soul that God had hidden His face from him. But when he took his seat in the council, or girt on his sword for war, these tempestuous workings of the soul had left no perceptible trace behind them. People who saw nothing of the Godly but their uncouth visages, and heard nothing from them but their groans and their whining hymns, might laugh at them. But those had little reason to laugh ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... the small, delicately-shaped ears. I should have guessed her age now as barely fifteen—almost that of a child. Thus changed, I felt more myself in her presence, more as I should have been in attendance upon any child. I scanned her face narrowly, and it struck me that there was a perceptible alteration; an expression of exhaustion or repose was creeping over it. The crisis of the fever was at hand. The repose of death or the wholesome sleep of returning health was not far off. Mother Renouf saw it as ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... loathsome food without soiling their feathers. In the air, owing to the magnificent ease with which they fly, they are splendid objects. Their habit is to rise high above the earth and hang motionless in the atmosphere on outstretched wings, or sail in circles without any perceptible motion of the pinions. Vultures are not the only raptorial birds that do this. Kites are almost equally skilled. But kites are distinguished by having a fairly long tail, that of vultures being short and wedge ...
— Birds of the Indian Hills • Douglas Dewar
... returned to the invalid's room. The faintness had now quite passed away, and Lucia thought, as she entered, that her mother's eyes turned to her with a peculiar look of inquiry. Happily the room was dark, so that the burning colour which rose to her cheeks was not perceptible; for the rest, she contrived to banish all consciousness from her voice, as she said quietly, "I have been writing to Mrs. Scott, to say ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 1 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... champagne, the supper, and the boxes of cigars and cigarettes, an atmosphere of solemnity was distinctly perceptible. It was as if each one of these officers, hardened to human suffering by a lifetime of discipline and active service, to say nothing of the years of horror through which they had just passed, could not but feel that in the last analysis the hurling ...
— The Man Who Rocked the Earth • Arthur Train
... believe that success will first come by this road. I refer to the soaring flight, by which the machine is permanently sustained in the air by the same means that are employed by soaring birds. They spread their wings to the wind, and sail by the hour, with no perceptible exertion beyond that required to balance and steer themselves. What sustains them is not definitely known, though it is almost certain that it is a rising current of air. But whether it be a rising current or something else, it is as well able to support ...
— The Early History of the Airplane • Orville Wright
... afterwards entered into what he called city business and gained a fortune before he was three-and-thirty, that he had married a widow who was much older than himself—a Dissenter, and in other ways probably of that disadvantageous quality usually perceptible in a first wife if inquired into with the dispassionate judgment of a second—was almost as much as she had cared to learn beyond the glimpses which Mr. Bulstrode's narrative occasionally gave of his early bent towards religion, his inclination to be a preacher, ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... But who could have failed to feel genial towards the quiet, scholarly, altogether charming gentleman of Sunnyside? Also the legs of Irving fitted well and often under the Hone mahogany, and the part of the author that was perceptible above the table gave a flavour and dignity to the board. Somehow we see Hone's cheeks puffed out with pride as he chronicles: "My old friend, Washington Irving, who visits his native country after an absence of seventeen years. I passed ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... margin of which several pigeons rose up, clattering their wings. They are fond of the neighbourhood of water, and are sure to be there some time during the day. The path went upwards, but the ascent was scarcely perceptible through hazel bushes, which became farther apart and thinner as the elevation increased, and the soil was less rich. Some hawthorn bushes succeeded, and from among these he stepped out into the open park. Nothing could be seen of the manor-house here. It was hidden ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies |
