"Serpentine" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... have sunk with all on board, leaving only a few good swimmers survivors of the wreck! Similar "accidents" occur in rivers, scarce two hundred yards in width; and you yourselves are acquainted with the annual drownings, even in the narrow and icy Serpentine! ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... air was crystal clear; his gaze penetrated for miles. And far up in the heights, where his own ship could never reach and where no clouds could be, were diaphanous wraiths. Like streamers of cloud in long serpentine forms, they writhed and shot through space with lightning speed. They grew luminous as they moved living streamers of moonlit clouds.... A whirling cluster was gathered into a falling mass. Out of it in a sharp right turn shot a projectile, tiny and glistening against the ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... emblem of water. The third symbol indicates the destroyer, the reformer or the renewer, (the uniter of the two) and thus the preserver or perpetuater eternally renewing itself. The universality of serpentine worship (or Phallic adoration) is attested by emblematic sculptures or architecture ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... impossible to keep your name out of the papers. Culture is so catholic that celebrities who in the old days would have been monopolised by esoteric cliques are common property. The paleographer and the coleopterist claim a share of our admiration equally with the serpentine dancer and the record-breaking cyclist, and the judicious editor prints their "interviews" at equal length. We have an impartial acquaintance with the tastes and views of cardinals and comic singers; ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... his Majesty, the Eu-shee, or symbol of peace and prosperity, and expressed his hopes that my Sovereign and he should always live in good correspondence and amity. It is a whitish agate-looking stone, perhaps serpentine, about a foot and a half long, curiously carved, and highly prized by the Chinese; but to me it does not appear in itself to be ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... she was frequently delayed till evening; and in the mildness of the summer twilight, with some fresh disappointment lying heavy on her heart, she made her way from the Marble Arch round the barren Serpentine into Piccadilly, with its stream of light beginning ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore
... and come back again to skate upon the Serpentine, if you please. You observe, Ansard, I have not made you a fellow with 50 pounds in his pocket, setting out to turn it into 300 pounds by a book of travels. I have avoided mention of Margate, Ramsgate, Broadstairs, and all common watering-places; ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... grown one layer over another, and to have formed reefs of limestone as do the living coral-building polyp animals. Parts of the original skeleton, consisting of carbonate of lime, are still preserved; while certain inter-spaces in the calcareous fossil have been filled up with serpentine and white augite. On this oldest of known organic remains Dr. Dawson has conferred the name of Eozoon Canadense (see Figures 582, 583); its antiquity is such that the distance of time which separated it from the Upper Cambrian period, or that of the Potsdam sandstone, may, says Sir ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... and the cliffs stood out against the sky in odder and more grotesque shapes than by daylight. A host of seamews were fluttering about and uttering the most unearthly hootings, but the sea was as yet quite calm, save where it broke in wavering, serpentine lines over the submerged reefs which encircle the island. The tidal current was pouring rapidly through the very narrow channel between Sark and the little isle of Breckhou, and its eddies stretching to us ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... irrigation is consequently difficult and navigation impossible. The course of the Iskr is remarkable: rising in the Rilska Planina, the river descends into the basin of Samakov, passing thence through a serpentine defile into the plateau of Sofia, where in ancient times it formed a lake; it now forces its way through the Balkans by the picturesque gorge of Iskretz. Somewhat similarly the Deli, or "Wild," Kamchik breaks ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... trembled, and his face grew purple behind his dyed mustachios. Only old Briggs was moved in the other carriage, and cast her great eyes nervously towards her old friends. Miss Crawley's bonnet was resolutely turned towards the Serpentine. Mrs. Bute happened to be in ecstasies with the poodle, and was calling him a little darling, and a sweet little zoggy, and a pretty pet. The carriages moved ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... travelling threshing machine at work in the rick-yard. I had heard the monotonous thrumming of its wheels a good way off. The scene is one of great animation, the machine is drawn up against the conical-shaped haystack, its black smoke stretches out in serpentine coils against the sky. A dozen men are busy about her: those who work her, old Anderson, son Robert—a dreadful lout he is too, quite unlike his sister—various other louts of the same calibre, the two little boys, very much ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 4, April, 1891 • Various
... is set down in its principles, and he that doth any way confute that spirit, presently it falls a raging, and cries out, serpent, liar, wolf, dragon, devil, be silent with thy serpentine wisdom, and smoke of the bottomless pit. Now in this the devil is wonderfully cunning; for least he should indeed be discovered, he doth set the face hard against the truth, and counteth it such a deadly enemy, that he will not, cannot bear it; but lets fly against it all ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... things in Tom's mind, for just then, as Dave resumed the pole, and began sending the boat quickly through the water, the boy was trying to grasp an eel, which had found the meshes one size too small for his well-fed body, and was now in regular serpentine fashion trying to discover a retreat into which he could plunge, and so escape the ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... summed up as—, 322-u. Septenary unites the triangle of Idea to the square of Form, becoming the Crown, 321-l. Septenary universally in repute, 635-u. Serapis represented with a human head and serpentine tail, 500-m. Serapis, the name of the Sun to his adorers on the Nile, 587-l. Serpent an emblem of eternity and immortality, 496-l. Serpents and Dragons have something divine in their nature, 494-m. Serpent and the bull used as symbols in Bakchian Mysteries, ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... a fine fellow, which gave a serpentine sort of a wriggle, and regained the water ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... course had become incongruous to him. He passed beneath that architectural effort and walked into the Park till he got upon the spreading grass. Here he continued to walk; he took his way across the elastic turf and came out by the Serpentine. He watched with a friendly eye the diversions of the London people, he bent a glance almost encouraging on the young ladies paddling their sweethearts about the lake and the guardsmen tickling tenderly with their bearskins the artificial flowers in the ...
— The Lesson of the Master • Henry James
... down,—in the wind dances the silvery grass; Night ambrosial circles me round; in the coolness so fragrant Greets me a beauteous roof, formed by the beeches' sweet shade. In the depths of the wood the landscape suddenly leaves me And a serpentine path guides up my footsteps on high. Only by stealth can the light through the leafy trellis of branches Sparingly pierce, and the blue smilingly peeps through the boughs, But in a moment the veil is rent, and the ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... a light indoors there appeared upon the table a thin glistening streak, as if a brush of varnish had been lightly dragged across it. Oak's eyes followed the serpentine sheen to the other side, where it led up to a huge brown garden-slug, which had come indoors to-night for reasons of its own. It was Nature's second way of hinting to him that he was to prepare ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... hated his existence, and thought he would try whether the Serpentine would drown him. I said I was agreeable, only he would never achieve it without me. I should have to 'tice away the police while he looked for the right spot. So he has promised to take me into partnership, and it's all right ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... "So saying, that king, Nahusha, quitted his serpentine form, and assuming his celestial shape he went back to Heaven. The glorious and pious Yudhishthira, too, returned to his hermitage with Dhaumya and his brother Bhima. Then the virtuous Yudhishthira narrated all that, in detail, to the Brahmanas who ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... the carpet beneath. Hollies gleamed green against the brown background, and in an open space of bare beech trees the littered ground was already pricked with the new green of the wild hyacinth. Now and again the rounded hills gave glimpses of the far Normandy plain across the serpentine river, then would as suddenly close in on them again until the car seemed to dart between the advancing battalions of the forest as though to escape capture. At length, in one such place, they leaped forward up a short rise, then rushed ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... a dark serpentine line that lay like a dead snake upon the lighted surface of the road. Jules grunted in token of comprehension. Liane Delorme ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... surely the work advanced. At first the walls took a beeline track up the hillside, but when they reached the higher ground, where scars of rock and patches of reedy swamp lay in their path, their progress became serpentine. But whether straight or winding, the white walls mounted ever upwards, and Peregrine knew that his doom was sealed. The moors which Ibbotsons had shepherded for two hundred years would soon pass out of ...
— Tales of the Ridings • F. W. Moorman
... an end; Yes, the outgazing over the stream, With the sun on each serpentine bend, Or, later, the luring moon-gleam; It ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy
... artist selects the type and paints it, the attention of the public is attracted to it and thereafter singles it out. We may prefer soft, round blonds with dimpled smiles, but that does not mean that such indisputable loveliness can challenge the attractions of a slender serpentine tragedy-queen, if the latter has established the vogue of her type through the medium of the ...
— Woman as Decoration • Emily Burbank
... noble streams—the Buona Ventura, the Calumet, and the Nu eleje sha wako, or River of the Strangers, while twenty rivers of inferior size rush with noise and impetuosity from the mountains, until they enter the prairies, where they glide smoothly in long serpentine courses between banks covered with flowers and shaded by the thick foliage of the western magnolia. The plains, as I have said, are gently undulating, and are covered with excellent natural pastures of mosquito-grass, blue grass, and clover, in which innumerable herds of buffaloes, ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... that I committed an economy in placing in my original title-page, that the question between him and me, was whether "Dr. Newman teaches that Truth is no virtue." It was a "wisdom of the serpentine type," since I did not add, "for its own sake." Now observe: First, as to the matter of fact, in the course of my Letters, which bore that title-page, I printed the words "for its own sake," five times over. Next, pray, what kind of a virtue ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... longer be the sport of sentiment forlorn, But scale the heights of Primrose Hill, pretending it's the Matterhorn; Or hie me through the dusk to sit beside the shimmering Serpentine, And, with a little make-believe, imagine ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 30, 1890. • Various
... for a whole day, first along the highroad, sometimes above and sometimes below the twisting, serpentine railway, then afterwards along a path on the side of the hill—a path that went through the crew-yards of isolated farms and even through the garden of a village priest. The priest was decorating an archway. He stood on a chair in the sunshine, ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... London parks, the ancient manor of Hyde. It was an early resort of fashion, for the Puritans in their time complained of it as the resort of "most shameful powdered-hair men and painted women." It covers about three hundred and ninety acres, and has a pretty sheet of water called the Serpentine. The fashionable drive is on the southern side, and here also is the famous road for equestrians known as Rotten Row, which stretches nearly a mile and a half. On a fine afternoon in the season the display ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... almost under his feet, you understand he did not trip, he had struck at it with his Service axe—the wolf thing tracking the red stain of the outlaws' trail along the base of the sand bank out across the ash colored silt sands. He watched it pausing, where the wind had eddied the dust in serpentine lines over the tracks, sniffing the air, loping across the break, and on out again at a run, nose down to earth: a blot against the sky; the burned out sulphur sky above an earth of embers and ashes. Was it a mirage; or was he going delirious; or had he fallen asleep to dream her ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... the pipes, a and c, into the serpentine tube, where it is condensed, and then flows through the tubes, d and b, back into the vessel, A, if the cock, r, is closed, but if the said cock is open, it flows into the receptacle, K. When the liquid begins to boil the steam passes ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 561, October 2, 1886 • Various
... trench was held till dawn before handing over. There was no hitch, and not a man wounded. The Battalion would have given much to see the Huns' faces when they looked across and found that long line of serpentine earth and wire shoved out under their noses. There would probably be some court-martialling of their patrols. Everything worked in absolute harmony, and with perfect success, and all got back safe to tell the tale. The Hun discovered what had been done only ...
— The Seventeenth Highland Light Infantry (Glasgow Chamber of Commerce Battalion) - Record of War Service, 1914-1918 • Various
... into the country until he was considered old enough to go with one of the annual school treats. His mother told him that the country in Cornwall was infinitely more beautiful than Kensington Gardens, and that compared with the sea the Serpentine was nothing at all. The sea! He had heard it once in a prickly shell, and it had sounded beautiful. As for the country he had read a story by Mrs. Ewing called Our Field, and if the country was the tiniest part as ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... beside Madame d'Espard, as she wished to be first seen: that is, in one of those attitudes in which science is concealed beneath an exquisite naturalness; a studied attitude, putting in relief the beautiful serpentine outline which, starting from the foot, rises gracefully to the hip, and continues with adorable curves to the shoulder, presenting, in fact, a profile of the whole body. With a subtlety which few women would ...
— The Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan • Honore de Balzac
... and a church-building that would be called noble in any city. Grace Church, on Ninth and West streets, is a large Gothic temple, seating nearly eight hundred persons—warmed, frescoed and heavily carpeted inside, and walled externally with brownstone mixed with the delicate pea-green serpentine of Chadd's Ford. The architect was a native Wilmingtonian—Thomas Dixon—now of Baltimore. The windows, including a very brilliant oriel, are finely stained: the font is a delicate piece of carving, the organ is grand, and the accommodations for Sunday-schools and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... late afternoon a chilly grey haze crept over the country and set me wishing for a fireside and the sound of friendly voices, and I turned my face towards beloved Silchester. Leaving the hills behind me I got away from the haze and went my devious way by serpentine roads through a beautiful, wooded, undulating country. And I wish that for a hundred, nay, for a thousand years to come, I could on each recurring November have such an afternoon ride, with that autumnal glory ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... leafiness," exactly as a Cheapside shop-keeper does about the beauties of his box on the Camberwell road. Mr. Hunt is altogether unacquainted with the face of nature in her magnificent scenes; he has never seen any mountain higher than Highgate-hill, nor reclined by any stream more pastoral than the Serpentine River. But he is determined to be a poet eminently rural, and he rings the changes—till one is sick of him, on the beauties of the different "high views" which he has taken of God and nature, in the course of some Sunday dinner ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... itself only in the shapes of the wood and the single stems growing darker but clearer; and above the gray clump, against a glimpse of growing light, they saw aloft the evil trinity of the trees. In their long lines there seemed to Paynter something faintly serpentine and even spiral. He could almost fancy he saw them slowly revolving as in some cyclic dance, but this, again, was but a last delusion of dreamland, for a few seconds later he was again asleep. In dreams he toiled through a tangle ...
— The Trees of Pride • G.K. Chesterton
... of the people of fashion. If you want to see London, you must come here on a fine summer day in June, at about four o'clock, and you will gaze on the finest and gayest equipages of England. A very pretty piece of water is in this park, which is called "the Serpentine River." The best skating of London is to be seen here, we are told, in hard winters. The entrance from Piccadilly is by a fine threefold arch. Here is the great Achilles of bronze, in honor of Wellington, ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various
... galleries or burrows between upper and under surface of leaf tissue, when made by larvae: they are linear, when they are narrow and only a little winding; serpentine, when they are curved or coiled, becoming gradually larger to a head-like end: trumpet-mines, when they start small and enlarge rapidly at tip; blotch mines, when they are irregular blotches tentiform, when the blotch mines throw the leaf ...
— Explanation of Terms Used in Entomology • John. B. Smith
... had only met her for a few minutes at a time. It must have been my eloquence, the power of my dramatic art to so vividly portray the hideous Hosley that she became quite as much affected as if she had intimately known the criminal, and had followed his creeping, serpentine ways for bringing the next creature into his power. It rather pleased me to find that I could exercise this wonderful influence—a force so long latent in a superior intellectual equipment, obscured by a disenchanting personal appearance, especially unconvincing ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... There is cultivated in the king's garden at Paris, a species of serpentine aloes without prickles, whose large and beautiful flower exhales a strong odour of the vanilla, during the time of its expansion, which is very short. It does not blow till towards the month of July—you then ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... up and dance a serpentine dance every time you take a trick. It is in very bad taste, unless you are a good dancer, and even then your opponents may ...
— The Silly Syclopedia • Noah Lott
... tried to remember how she had romped in girlhood under the wide sunshine in the prairie grass, how her little playhouse had sat where the new dining-room now stood, how her dolls used to litter the narrow porch that grew into the winding, serpentine veranda that belted the house, how she read his books, how she went about with him on his daily rounds, and how she had suddenly bloomed into a womanhood that made him feel shy and abashed in her presence. He wondered where it was upon the way that he had lost clasp ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... Hyde Park, by a bridge over the Serpentine, an artificial river, are Kensington Gardens, beautiful pleasure-grounds attached to Kensington Palace, a building belonging to ...
— Stories and Legends of Travel and History, for Children • Grace Greenwood
... to rapidly produce a pressure of nine atmospheres or more by direct heating. The flanges of the tubing are provided with a cut-off of angle iron identical with that of the tube, D. By means of this arrangement the cocks and the flanges, E, permit of communication between the serpentine tubing, R, and the boiler being interrupted; while the heat developed by the fire-place, F, causes an active circulation in ...
— Scientific American Suppl. No. 299 • Various
... another patches of aromatic thyme and wild strawberries keep up the charm of the place. As we draw nearer to the Tower the ground is laid out in a wilder and more picturesque manner, the walks are more serpentine. We turned a corner, and Mr. Beckford stood before us, attended by an aged servant, whose hairs have whitened in his employment, and whose skill has laid out these grounds in this beautiful manner. Mr. Beckford welcomed me in the kindest way, and immediately began ...
— Recollections of the late William Beckford - of Fonthill, Wilts and Lansdown, Bath • Henry Venn Lansdown
... gone a-skating on the Serpentine after a fall of snow? Here and there a more or less circular space has been swept clear, and on each space a batch of skaters whirl and attitudinize, the uncleared interspaces of snow-covered, impracticable ice given up to miscellaneous loafers. Even so it is with ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... remembered | that the least part of knowledge passed to | man by this so large a charter from God | must be subject to that use for which God | hath granted it; which is the benefit and | relief of the state and society or man; | for otherwise all manner of knowledge | becometh malign and serpentine, and | therefore as carrying the quality of the | serpent's sting and malice it maketh the | mind of man to swell; as the Scripture | saith excellently, KNOWLEDGE BLOWETH UP, | BUT CHARITY BUILDETH UP{40}. And again the | 40. 1 Corinthians 8, 1 same author doth notably disavow both | ...
— Valerius Terminus: of the Interpretation of Nature • Sir Francis Bacon
... than seated on the easy chair; everything from the curves of his smooth limbs to the coils of his silvered hair suggesting the circles of a serpent more than the straight limbs of a man—the unmistakable, splendid serpentine gentleman we had seen walking in North London, his eyes shining ...
— The Club of Queer Trades • G. K. Chesterton
... writhes like a worm that you tread on. The water is splashed for a long way around. The spray almost blinds us. But soon the reptile's agony draws to an end; its movements become fainter, its contortions cease to be so violent, and the long serpentine form lies a lifeless log on ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... I'll see some issue of my spiteful execrations. Then there's Achilles, a rare engineer! If Troy be not taken till these two undermine it, the walls will stand till they fall of themselves. O thou great thunder-darter of Olympus, forget that thou art Jove, the king of gods, and, Mercury, lose all the serpentine craft of thy caduceus, if ye take not that little little less-than-little wit from them that they have! which short-arm'd ignorance itself knows is so abundant scarce, it will not in circumvention deliver a fly from a spider ...
— The History of Troilus and Cressida • William Shakespeare [Craig edition]
... his pocket for a pencil, produced the rump thereof, spread the letter upon his knee, and began writing on the back of it. It was like an internal surgical operation, for his tongue protruded as he wrote, marking his progress by a series of serpentine writhings that ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... in painting, dyeing, and calico-printing; and its value is so great, the proprietor of a serpentine tract in Shetland, where chromate of iron was found by Professor Jameson, cleared, in a ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 362, Saturday, March 21, 1829 • Various
... distributed chairs. I had a queer feeling that whenever I wasn't looking at them straight they went askew, and moved about, and played a noiseless puss-in-the-corner behind my back. And the cornice had a serpentine design with masks—masks altogether ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... teeth were set chattering; but he thought of Annadoah and the grim need of food, and he gripped the upstander of his sled more determinedly. When the moon again unclosed its pearly sheen over the ice, the serpentine chasms moved their tortuous backs and writhed about them, the icy hummocks billowed, and the glittering ice-peaked horizon swam in a dizzy circle ...
— The Eternal Maiden • T. Everett Harre
... at finding himself ignored and left out of the conversation, had apparently determined to amuse himself in his own way. He had meandered back and forth across the road, as was shown by the serpentine character of his tracks; now, catching sight of a tempting stalk of mullein by the fence, he had walked across the gutter and was just stretching his head forward to seize the coveted morsel, when Mrs. Adams interrupted ...
— Half a Dozen Girls • Anna Chapin Ray
... intervals, for some months, and at such times the wail is renewed, and their bodies lacerated as at the interment. At Boga Lake, I saw a grave with a very neat hut of reeds made over it, surmounted by netting, and having a long curious serpentine double trench, of a few inches deep, surrounding it; possibly it might have been the burial place of the native mentioned by Major Mitchell, as having been shot by his black, ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... 764, Maestro Giudetto ornamented the delightful Church of St. Michele at Lucca. This work, or at least the best of it, is a procession of various little partly heraldic and partly grotesque animals, inlaid with white marble on a ground of green serpentine. They are full of the best expression of mediaeval art. The Lion of Florence, the Hare of Pisa, the Stork of Perugia, the Dragon of Pistoja, are all to be seen in these simple mosaics, if one chooses to consider them as such, hardly ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... the sea between towering cliffs, and behind a lonely rock, pierced with many caves and blow-holes through which the sea in storm time sent its thunderous voice, together with a fountain of drifting spume. Hence, it wound westwards in a serpentine course, guarded at its entrance by two little curving piers to left and right. These were roughly built of dark slates placed endways and held together with great beams bound with iron bands. Thence, it flowed up the rocky bed of the stream whose winter torrents had of old cut out ...
— Dracula's Guest • Bram Stoker
... Hebron, the rounded top of Scopus where Titus camped with his Roman legions, the flattened peak of Frank Mountain. Bethlehem is not visible; but there is the tiny village of Bethphage, and the first roof of Bethany peeping over the ridge, and the Inn of the Good Samaritan in a red cut of the long serpentine road to Jericho. The dark range of Gilead and Moab seems like a huge wall of lapis-lazuli beyond the furrowed, wrinkled, yellowish clay-hills and the wide gray trench of the Jordan Valley, wherein the river marks its crooked path with a ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... conclave of Lyons. He at once dropped down the Rhone, and fixed the seat of his pontificate at Avignon. Able, learned though he was, he was not above the superstitions of his age. He had been given a serpentine ring by the Countess of Foix, and had lost it. He believed that it had been stolen from him wherewith to work some magic spell against his health. The Pope pledged all his goods, movable and immovable, for the safe restoration of his ring: he pronounced ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... brain, became gently mesmerised as the shallow furrows made by the nozzles of the drill drew themselves perpetually just before him. He could see the bright seeds dribbling into the top of the serpentine tubes, but no eye could catch their swift transit into the earth, which closed and tossed over itself in the wake of the nozzles as foam turns and throws itself about in the wake of a screw. Ishmael, his eyes on that living earth that ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... life! for while the swallow and the house-martin discover the greatest address in raising and securely fixing crusts or shells of loam as cunabula for their young, the bank-martin terebrates a round and regular hole in the sand or earth, which is serpentine, horizontal, and about two feet deep. At the inner end of this burrow does this bird deposit, in a good degree of safety, her rude nest, consisting of fine grasses and feathers, usually goose-feathers, very inartificially ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... cold, or at a lukewarm heat, when the supply of hot water can be drawn from a separate boiler. When, however, it is necessary to work at the boil, then the vat must be fitted with a steam coil. This is best laid along the bottom in a serpentine form. Above the pipe should be an open lattice-work bottom, which, while it permits the free circulation of boiling water in the vat, prevents the material being dyed from coming in contact with the steam pipe. This is important ...
— The Dyeing of Woollen Fabrics • Franklin Beech
... juncture, before Tiffles had quite uncoiled his serpentine arms from her, and while she was looking fiery indignation at him, the door was pushed open, and ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... One would think, ARTHUR, we belonged to that society of lunatics who make a point of taking a matutinal plunge in the Serpentine every morning, all the year round, even if they have to break the ice to do ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 26, 1892 • Various
... of jasper, agate, chalcedony, serpentine, nephrite, steatite, quartz, crystal, glass, jade (white and green), and chrysoprase. Mention is also made of rakan, but the meaning of the term is obscure. Probably it was a variety ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... deck to pick up any information likely to be of use to us in the future; and I went to the helm, whilst my companion busied himself with the sounding-line. An hour's run brought us to the inner end of the channel, which we found to be somewhat serpentine in its course, but trending generally in a north-north-west direction, with a minimum depth of two and a half fathoms. A run of about twenty minutes carried us clear of this channel and we found ourselves in Cardenas Bay, an almost ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... having their fodder betimes. Scarlet-capped chanticleer gets himself on the nearest rail fence and lifts up his rancorous voice like some irate old cardinal launching the curse of Rome. Something crawls swiftly along the gray of the serpentine turnpike—a cart, with the driver lashing a jaded horse. A quick wind goes shivering by, and is ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... was luxuriant, and unearthly. Floating in the sky were serpentine tendrils as thick as a man's wrist, purplish flowers and ropy fungus growths. They twisted and writhed and shot out in all directions, creating a tangle immediately beneath him and curving up toward the ship amidst a ...
— The Sky Trap • Frank Belknap Long
... unbroken chain of inter-communication, like to a prodigious sarpent, with his head resting upon the shores of Europe, and his lengthened form stretching over the ocean and curling along this great winding stream in serpentine grandeur, proudly flaps his tail at Paducah! . . . SIR, the ball is in motion; it is rolling down in noise of thunder from the mountain heights, and comes booming in its majesty over the wide-spread plain. Yes, Sir, and it will continue ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... upon the horizon like a faintly tinted, half-washed out transparency. A light breeze ruffled the broad bosom of the Alster, and the red and green steamboats plowed dark furrows in its brightness, which remained there long after the boats had passed, and faded away finally in many a serpentine curve. Numbers of little rowing and sailing-boats floated upon the slow current, peopled by couples and parties in their Sunday clothes, their talk and merry laughter sounding across the water to the shore. A sailing-boat passed quite close to the terrace on its way ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... subjects; but I have done what I could to restrain him within the bounds of spiritual politeness. If he disclaims having tempted Eve in the shape of the Serpent, it is only because the book of Genesis has not the most distant allusion to anything of the kind, but merely to the Serpent in his serpentine capacity. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... effort, on the morning of the 13th, to stem the current under sail, but as the course of the river was very serpentine, we found that greater progress could be made by tracking. Steel River presents much beautiful scenery; it winds through a narrow, but well wooded, valley, which at every turn disclosed to us an agreeable variety of prospect, rendered more picturesque by the effect ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the Years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 1 • John Franklin
... Idle Lake. I would fain have loitered an hour more in this enchanted bower, had not the gardener, whose patience was quite exhausted, and who had never heard of the Red-Cross Knight and his achievements, dragged me away to a sunburnt, contemptible hillock, commanding the view of a serpentine ditch, and decorated with the title of Jardin Anglois. Some object like decayed limekilns and mouldering ovens, is disposed in an amphitheatrical form, on the declivity of this tremendous eminence: and there is to be ivy, and a cascade, and what not, as my conductor observed. A glance was ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... battle, he audibly utters, with bared head, some growl of rugged prayer, far from orthodox at times, but much in earnest: that lifting of his hat for prayer, is his last signal on such occasions. He is very cunning as required, withal; not disdaining the serpentine method when no other will do. With Friedrich Wilhelm, who is his second-cousin (Mother's grand-nephew, if the reader can count that), he is from of old on the best footing, and contrives to be his Mentor in many things besides War. Till his quarrel with Grumkow, of which we shall hear, he took ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle
... where high trees were growing, and where he again found a safe, but uncomfortable, sleeping-place. He wandered about for many days on the wooded mountains, and again reached a high ridge, over which he passed, until he arrived at a valley through which a brook ran, in a serpentine direction, among verdant meadows. He traced the brook through the valley, and reached a spot where it flowed into a river. He now followed the course of the river, and as night came on before he perceived any human habitations, he lay down on the bank among the high grass, ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... composed of carbonate of lime—whilst the laminae of the second series alternate with the preceding, are green in colour, and are found by chemical analysis to consist of some silicate, generally serpentine or the closely-related "loganite." In some instances, however, all the laminae are calcareous, the concentric arrangement still remaining visible in consequence of the fact that the laminae are composed alternately of ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... contemporary, have been seen flying over the Serpentine. Most of the snap was taken out of the performance by the fact that none of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 14, 1919 • Various
... the schoolroom, the game starts with all of the players ready to march, the first part of the game, in which they are recruited, being omitted. The class should march in serpentine form up one aisle and down the next, etc., instead of encircling a row of seats. There should be for a large class from one to six less seats than the number of players. For instance, one seat should be ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft
... and looked eminently refined, although worn and haggard in appearance. Denzil noted two peculiar marks about him; the first, a serpentine cicatrice extending on the right cheek from lip almost to ear; the second, the loss of the little finger of the left hand, which was cut off at the first joint. As he examined the man a second and more violent fit ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... enough," she answered, after a second reading, "though its guileless simplicity is, perhaps, under the circumstances, just a leetle overdone; but the handwriting—the handwriting is duplicity itself: a cunning, serpentine hand, no openness or honesty in it. Depend upon it, that girl is ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... stage of mere posing and declamation in which so many players are halted by their vanity—the universal human vanity that is content with small triumphs, or with purely imaginary triumphs. But she had a notable figure of the lank, serpentine kind and a bad, sensual face that harmonized with it. Especially in artificial light she had an uncanny allure of the elemental, the wild animal in the jungle. With every disposition and effort to use her physical charms to further herself she would not have been still struggling ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... my steps to the fireworks, which were let off under the direction of the Military from the middle of the Park. I afterwards saw the Serpentine where there was a very brilliant display. There was a splendid illumination at the lower end on the water, a car drawn by elephants with lanterns, and boats with variegated lamps, water rockets, and, at intervals, ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)
... Mr. Adiesen appeared at his own door laden with blocks of serpentine, fragments of lichen, moss, seaweed, and shells. Yaspard followed him into a little room which was doing duty as a study until the Den was restored to order, and as the scientist put down his treasures the lad said—in a trembling voice, be it confessed—"I want to tell you about something, ...
— Viking Boys • Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby
... Crema, Chiaravalle, and Vercelli. To their quarries of mandorlato the Veronese builders owed the peach-bloom colours of their columned aisles. Carrara provided the Pisans with mellow marble for their Baptistery and Cathedral; Monte Ferrato supplied Pistoja and Prato with green serpentine; while the pietra serena of the Apennines added austerity to the interior of Florentine buildings. Again, in other instances, we detect the influence of commerce or of conquest. The intercourse of Venice with Alexandria determined the unique architecture of S. ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... decorated the temples and tombs of Ancient Egypt were for the most part painted. Coloured stones, such as granite, basalt, diorite, serpentine, and alabaster, sometimes escaped this law of polychrome; but in the case of sandstone, limestone, or wood it was rigorously enforced. If sometimes we meet with uncoloured monuments in these materials, we ...
— Manual Of Egyptian Archaeology And Guide To The Study Of Antiquities In Egypt • Gaston Camille Charles Maspero
... have overtaken him, but at that moment Fitzpiers turned in through a gate to one of the rambling drives among the trees at this side of the wood, which led to nowhere in particular, and the beauty of whose serpentine curves was the only justification of their existence. Felice almost simultaneously trotted down the lane towards the timber-dealer, in a little basket-carriage which she sometimes drove about the estate, unaccompanied by a servant. She turned in at the same place without ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... serpentine path which was bordered with masses of brilliant chrysanthemums, Beryl walked rapidly, feeling almost stifled by the pressure of contending emotions. Recollecting that these spice censers of Autumn were her mother's favorite ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... feet long may be called a toy ship, but it is a toy that can teach much to an Admiral, and I should not like to have as my comrade on a voyage the man of forty who can pass the Serpentine without a glance at the little ragged urchin there, who is half in the water himself while he reaches with a twig his tiny lugger after its long voyage across the lake among ducks, and row-boats, and billows ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... road, dip into a sand arroyo, edge slanting up the farther bank, wriggle round a cluster of small hills, shoot out across a mesa, and climb slowly toward those hills to the west, finally to contort itself into serpentine switchbacks as it sought the crest—and once on the crest (which was in reality but the visible edge of another great mesa), there would be grass for a horse and cedar-wood for a fire, and water with which ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... various sorts, with spears and swords. These swivel guns are called lelahs, and are generally of brass. The klewang is a sort of hanger, or short sword. Their most formidable and favourite weapon is the kriss—a short dagger of a serpentine form. Each vessel had a square red flag at its foremast head, and a long pennant aft. The Illanon pirates wear a large sword, with a handle to be grasped by two hands. They dress, when going into battle, ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... experience has taught us!—this is precisely what she did not do. When the horrible apparition first rose in her very face, as it were, a momentary weakness caught her and she clung to the sash for support. Then the wonderful fire of the malignant eyes, green, serpentine, opalescent, with the wave-like flux of a glowworm's light seen under a glass, riveted her attention. She had ceased to tremble. Our fear of death varies with our desire for life. Dulled by a great grief, she did ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... him, and he disregarded her prohibition. She slipped from his grasp as lithely as the serpentine pearls had run ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... feminine variation the two girls illustrated. He had a distinct recollection of one crisp October afternoon before he went to Paris, as they walked home together under the brown curling leaves and passed the Serpentine, when he had found that the old charm of Janet's gray eyes was changing to a new one. He remembered the pleasure he had felt in dallying with the thought of making them lustrous, one day, with tenderness ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... dragon, or that the dragon by his tail, did draw and cast down abundance of the stars of heaven to the earth. Rev. 12:4; Isa. 9:14,15. The prophet that speaketh lies either by opinion or practice, he is the tail, the dragon's tail, the serpentine tail of the devil. Isa. 9:14,15. And so in his order, every professor that by his iniquity draweth both himself and others down to hell, he is the tail. Nor can Satan work such exploits by any, as ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... momently through whorl and hollow, And form and line and solid follow Solid and line and form to dream Fantastic down the eternal stream; An obscure world, a shifting world, Bulbous, or pulled to thin, or curled, Or serpentine, or driving arrows, Or serene slidings, or March narrows. There slipping wave and shore are one, And weed and mud. No ray of sun, But glow to glow fades down the deep (As dream to unknown dream in sleep); Shaken translucency ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... consecutive years), the elite of the Quebec beau monde left the city to attend Sir James Craig's kind invitation. Once opposite Powell Place (now Spencer Wood) the guests left their vehicles on the main road, and plunged into a dense forest, following a serpentine avenue which led to a delightful cottage in full view of the majestic St. Lawrence; the river here appears to flow past amidst luxuriant green bowers which line its banks. Small tables for four, for six, for eight guests are laid out facing the cottage, on a platform of planed deals—this ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... everybody doted on him. He was "a man of desperate fortunes," and he did not shrink from violent methods. In studying his life we are amused, we are almost scandalised, at his snake-like quality. He moves with serpentine undulations, and the beautiful hard head is lifted from ambush to strike the unsuspecting enemy at sight. With his protestations, his volubility, his torrent of excuses, his evasive pertinacity, Sir Walter Raleigh is the very opposite of the "strong silent" type of soldier which the nineteenth ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... to obey his orders; but when I saw the creature keeping up its rapid serpentine motion, I felt disposed to let it go down again into its watery depths. I did not, however, but gradually swept the point of my rod round, drawing my prisoner nearly to the bank, and then with one good swing drew it right out on to the ...
— Burr Junior • G. Manville Fenn
... Indian names, Alatahama, Savanna, Santee and Pedee. Among the hills these rivers are composed of different branches, and run in a rapid course; but lose their velocity when they reach the plains, through which they glide smoothly along, in a serpentine course, to the ocean. Up these large rivers the tide flows a considerable way, and renders them navigable for ships, brigs, sloops and schooners, and smaller craft force their way still higher than the ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 1 • Alexander Hewatt
... all that I had seen in this amphibious little village to the buildings and landscapes on Chinese platters and tea-pots; but here I found the similarity complete; for I was told that these gardens were modeled upon Van Bramm's description of those of Yuen min Yuen, in China. Here were serpentine walks, with trellised borders; winding canals, with fanciful Chinese bridges; flower-beds resembling huge baskets, with the flower of "love lies bleeding" falling over to the ground. But mostly had the fancy ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... cab round and drove through the Park. But I was puzzled about him and looked back at him once or twice pretending that I was looking to see if a cab or car was coming up behind. And as we passed over the Serpentine Bridge I saw him throw something ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson
... "full-dress" of a modern gentleman, and therein antic through the "Lancers," and he would simply be ridiculous,—which is all I allege against Thomas, Richard, and Henry, Esq. A woman's dancing is gliding, swaying, serpentine. A man's is jerks, hops, convulsions, and acute angles. The woman is light, airy, indistinctly defined: airy movements are in keeping. The man is sombre in hue, grave in tone, distinctly outlined; and nothing is more incongruous, to my ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... sunny-velvet green, all made illustrious by the clearest warm sunshine, and a soft, sweet air. The magnificent groves of trees all round; and far off in the terminus, the towers and pinnacles of the Parliament Houses, and Westminster Abbey towers, rise into the clear sky over the blue waters of the Serpentine. A pretty yacht, with one white wing, slowly moved along. Large, princely lambs grazed on the sunny lawns. I think that thou wouldst have asked no more in the way of a park. We sat down on a felled tree and talked ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop |
