"Smoothness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sharply that she was fading. There were lines and shadows and pallor that ought not to be in the face of a woman of thirty-five. She smoothed the vertical lines in her forehead, and then let her hands remain over her face, while behind their cool smoothness her mind resumed ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... character,—will cause a thicker cuticle to grow over some of the finer qualities of our nature, as on the face and hands, or as severe manual labor robs the hands of some of their delicacy of touch. So staying in the house, on the other hand, may produce a softness and smoothness, not to say thinness of skin, accompanied by an increased sensibility to certain impressions. Perhaps we should be more susceptible to some influences important to our intellectual and moral growth, if the sun had shone ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... horses with us, Dave and I set out to look up our herds and resume our former positions. I rode through Sponsilier's cattle while en route to my own, and remembered the first impression they had made on my mind,—their uniformity in size and smoothness of build,—and now found them fatted into finished form, the herd being a credit to any drover. Continuing on my way, I intercepted my own cattle, lying down over hundreds of acres, and so contented that I ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams
... this chapter to give some idea of the ease and smoothness with which this delicate operation of transportation was carried out. The Battalions which composed the First Expeditionary Force had been spread in small groups over the whole length and breadth of Britain. They had been mobilised, ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... dark and stupendous rocks, rising like gigantic walls and battlements; these would be rent by wide and yawning chasms, that seemed to speak of past convulsions of nature. Sometimes the river was of a glassy smoothness and placidity; at other times it roared along in impetuous rapids and foaming cascades. Here, the rocks were piled in the most fantastic crags and precipices; and in another place, they were succeeded by delightful valleys carpeted with green-award. ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... again languidly, and turned them on a monk sitting beside him,—a monk whose face was neither old nor young, but which presented a singular combination of both qualities. His high forehead, white as marble, had no furrows to mar its smoothness, and from under deep brows a pair of wondering wistful brown eyes peered like the eyes of a lost and starving child. The cheeks were gaunt and livid, the flesh hanging in loose hollows from the high and prominent bones, yet the mouth was that of ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... single incision. The finger, or a sound, must then be introduced to feel if any more stones are present. The closed forceps make a very effectual instrument for this purpose. Much information may be gained from the appearance of the first stone, the presence or absence of facets. Its smoothness or roughness enables us to form a pretty certain opinion; yet the bladder should always be carefully searched; and if the stone has been friable or broken in extraction, should be washed out by a current of water. Where the calculi are very numerous, or where many fragments ...
— A Manual of the Operations of Surgery - For the Use of Senior Students, House Surgeons, and Junior Practitioners • Joseph Bell
... answer. He merely chirruped at the horses. The willing beasts increased their pace and the sleigh sped along with that intoxicating smoothness only to be felt when travelling with double "bobs" on a ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... the low-pressure cylinder, frowning portly from above, emitted a faint wheeze at every thrust, and except for that low hiss the engines worked their steel limbs headlong or slow with a silent, determined smoothness. And all this, the white walls, the moving steel, the floor plates under Solomon Rout's feet, the floors of iron grating above his head, the dusk and the gleams, uprose and sank continuously, with one accord, upon the harsh wash of the waves against the ship's side. The whole ...
— Typhoon • Joseph Conrad
... are set in my forehead, the veins stand out upon my hands, and my shadow is the shadow of a stooping old man; and when, from frequent weariness, I rest my head on my hand, the fingers clasp only smoothness, or, at best, but a few scattered locks,—wisps, I might as well say. If ever I took pride in anything, it was in my fine head of hair. Well, what matters it? Since heart of youth is left me, I'll never ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... purpose of shocking Lady Mary Chance; and the next minute listening with a deference graceful enough to turn even the seasoned head of a warrior to a grey-haired general describing the taking of the Vimy Ridge; and finally, Helena, holding a dancing class under the cedars on the yellow smoothness of the lawn, after tea, for such young men as panted to conquer the mysteries of "hesitation" or jazzing, and were ardently courting instruction in the desperate hope of capturing their teacher for a dance ...
— Helena • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Two Arrows, as he dodged around the hopeless side he came to. Away around, and the same mocking smoothness made his heart sink, while the fierce growl of the huge wild beast behind him thrilled him through ...
— Two Arrows - A Story of Red and White • William O. Stoddard
... German legends the uneven surface of the earth was due to the giants, who marred its smoothness by treading upon it while it was still soft and newly created, while streams were formed from the copious tears shed by the giantesses upon seeing the valleys made by their husbands' huge footprints. As such was the Teutonic belief, the people ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... man when not annoyed; there was Pedro, Yacob's nephew; and there was Medina-sarote, who was the youngest daughter of Yacob. She was little esteemed in the world of the blind, because she had a clear-cut face and lacked that satisfying, glossy smoothness that is the blind man's ideal of feminine beauty, but Nunez thought her beautiful at first, and presently the most beautiful thing in the whole creation. Her closed eyelids were not sunken and red after the common way of the valley, but lay as ...
— The Door in the Wall And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... The smoothness of the eternal snow glows like a silver shield on the breast of the giant peak. Far below are vineyards, olive groves, orchards, and orange and lemon groves, for Sicily is celebrated for these fruits. Above them are beech-woods, so deep and dark that they are seldom ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... our island under an assumed name," said Darrow in tones that had the smoothness and the rasp of silk. "Rather annoying. Not good form, quite, even for ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... months the net revenue receipts of the Federal Government have been about 20 billion dollars, almost as much as during the closing 6 months of 1944 when the country was still engaged in all-out warfare. The high level of these receipts reflects the smoothness of the reconversion and particularly the strength of consumer demand. But the receipts so far collected, it must be remembered, do not reflect any of the tax reductions made by the Revenue Act of 1945. These reductions will not have their full effect on the revenue collected ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... distribution of the rifles and ammunition among the loyalist population, and the almost miraculous precision with which they were carried out on that memorable Friday night, extorted the admiration even of the most inveterate political enemies of Ulster. The smoothness with which the machinery of organisation worked was only possible on account of the hearty willingness of all the workers, combined with the discipline to which they gladly ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill
... he gestured he quivered to his very finger-tips, and down there on the benches they quivered with him. The cold words—he warmed and revivified them. Under the caress of his beautiful, barely perceptible brogue the commonest, harshest lines took on smoothness and roundness; and from out his mouth the fine, tender words bloomed like summer flowers; and the larger, colorful words ...
— Sonnie-Boy's People • James B. Connolly
... lost its round smoothness for a short moment, but cleared again before the Duke dropped back with a ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... an unexpected hum of voices; the machinery seemed to stop for a moment, and when it was again continued it had a different melody. The wheels, if such they were, seemed to turn with smoothness, and they felt a sudden inclination in the seats on which they ...
— The Boy Volunteers with the Submarine Fleet • Kenneth Ward
... and outwardly at Mrs. Bertram's plain speech, and instantly, for he was a man of very nice penetration, saw that the arrival of this lady, this brilliant sun of society, in the little world of Northbury, would not add to the smoothness of his lot. ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... he and the "old professor" did not get along well together. It was really surprising how well they did get along. Their dynamic interview of last June had at once been buried out of sight, and since then their days had flowed along with unbroken smoothness. If there had been times when the young man's thought recoiled from the compact and the intimacy, his manner never betrayed any sign of it. On the contrary, he found himself mysteriously answering the growing dependence of the old man with a growing sense of responsibility toward him, and discovering ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... small subjects. In a cut state it is of such value that it cannot be overpraised—a branch with four fully blown flowers and others nearly out, requires no assistance as a table decoration. Its blooms have the quality of keeping clean, doubtless from the smoothness of ...
— Hardy Perennials and Old Fashioned Flowers - Describing the Most Desirable Plants, for Borders, - Rockeries, and Shrubberies. • John Wood
... all its peaceful smoothness; looking out of the window, I perceived that the high rampart, on which the kiosk was constructed, was built at a distance of thirty or forty yards from the water, and that the intervening space was covered with boats, hauled up high and dry, and animated with the process of building and ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... drove full half a mile over a broad gravel path, with rich grass on each side, and grand old patriarchs, oak and beech, standing here and there, and dappled deer, grazing or lying, in mottled groups, till they came to a noble avenue of lofty lime-trees, with stems of rare size and smoothness, and towering piles on piles of translucent leaves, that glowed in the sun ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... length, uplifts his head, Bent for some moments low, And there is neither grief nor dread Upon his subtle brow. For well can he his feelings task, And well his looks command; His features well his heart can mask, With smiles and smoothness bland. ...
— Poems • (AKA Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte) Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell
... erect statues to such murderers as should by their next-of-kin, or other person interested in their glory, make out a claim either of superior atrocity, or, in equal atrocity, of superior neatness, continuity of execution, perfect preparation or felicitous originality, smoothness or curiosa felicitas (elaborate felicity). The men who murdered the cat, as we read in the Newgate Calendar, were good, but Williams better who murdered the baby. And perhaps (but the hellish felicity of the last act makes us demur) ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... that To this impression my rash yielding heart, Trusting the smoothness of the father's prate, Opposed no more resistance. Fool—I sprang A second time into the flame, and then ...
— Nathan the Wise • Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
... powdered sandstone, sand, or ashes, all of which are used with or without water. At certain stages in the progress of the work, some articles are rubbed on a piece of sandstone to reduce the surfaces to smoothness; but the stone, in this instance, is more a substitute for the file than for the sand-paper. Perhaps I should say that the file is a substitute for the stone, for there is little doubt that stone, sand, and ashes preceded file and ...
— Navajo Silversmiths • Washington Matthews
... sailors call a catspaw, rising no higher than just to cause a ripple on the water, and lasting only about an hour. When it was over, the sea again fell into a dead calm; its surface assuming the smoothness of a mirror. ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... look still more slender, with her long tapering limbs, her strong, slender body, with its round throat, round neck, round and supple arms; and her adorable neck and throat, of a milky whiteness, had the exquisite softness and smoothness of white satin. For a long time, at the ungraceful age between twelve and eighteen, she had looked awkwardly tall, climbing trees like a boy. Then, from the ungainly hoyden had been evolved this charming, delicate and ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... made a mere rumbling. They created a tumult which was like the growl of thunder if one were in the midst of the thunder-cloud. It was a numbing noise. It was almost a paralyzing noise. But Jamison talked with professional smoothness. ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... of the one mingling with the greys of the other, and both enhancing the warm tints of the stone. This contrast of colours is very agreeable to the eye; yet when the temples were perfect it did not exist. There is no doubt that their surface was coated with a fine stucco, wrought to smoothness, toned like marble, and painted over with the blue and red and green decorations proper to the Doric style. This fact is a practical answer to those aesthetic critics who would fain establish that the Greeks practised no deception in their arts. ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... the following poem by Longfellow, one at a time, first the English and then the Latin version. The syllables inclosed in parentheses are to be slurred or omitted to secure smoothness of meter. ...
— Latin for Beginners • Benjamin Leonard D'Ooge
... company that gathered that night around the long table with its mottled oil-cloth covering and benches polished to a glass-like smoothness with their own vigorous bodies. They did not talk much about the Old Man; indeed, they came no nearer the subject than to ask Weary if he were going to drive the team in to Dry Lake. They did not talk much about anything, for that matter; even the knives and forks seemed ...
— Flying U Ranch • B. M. Bower
... towed. As that bubble tried ponderously to rotate, rainbow gleams ran across it, hiding and then revealing the constellations. Here, on the asteroid's axis, there was no weight, and one moved with underwater smoothness, as if disembodied. "Oh, a fairy ...
— Industrial Revolution • Poul William Anderson
... to assure herself that this thinking would die out. Looking round the world, her small world, how many women there were who had not married the men they had loved first! How few, perhaps, had done so! Life was not good-natured enough for smoothness such as that. And yet did not they, as a rule, live well with their husbands? What right had she to expect anything better than their fate? Each poor insipid dame that she saw, toddling on with half-a-dozen children at her heels, might have had as good a John Gordon of her own as ...
— An Old Man's Love • Anthony Trollope
... flowers; and advancing soundless, unreal, the silver wheels of that unearthly chariot amid the Fauns. On, on they gamboled, hoof in yielding turf, blowing reed melodies, mocking water, their lips laid sidelong, their eyes aleer along the smoothness of ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... give a fluent answer to them, perhaps a misleading answer. But try it yourself, Walter. You'll find you can't. You may start all right, but not all the words will be reacted to in the same time or with the same smoothness and ease. Yet, like the expressions of a dream, they often seem senseless. But they have a meaning as soon as they are 'psychanalyzed.' All the mistakes in answering the second time, for example, have a reason, ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... dress, without which no female appears. The common people here, as in all countries where they live poorly and dirtily, are hard-featured, and of very brown, or rather tawny complexions. As they seldom eat meat, their juices are destitute of that animal oil which gives a plumpness and smoothness to the skin, and defends those fine capillaries from the injuries of the weather, which would otherwise coalesce, or be shrunk up, so as to impede the circulation on the external surface of the body. As for the dirt, it undoubtedly blocks up the pores of the skin, and disorders the perspiration; ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... Lambert's "Family of Cats" is considered one of the finest cat pictures in the world. In this painting the mother sits upon a table watching the antics of her four frivolous kittens. There is a wonderful smoothness of touch and refinement of treatment that have never yet been excelled. "After the Banquet" is another excellent example of the same smoothness of execution, with fulness of action instead of repose. And yet there is an undeniable lack of the softer attributes ...
— Concerning Cats - My Own and Some Others • Helen M. Winslow
... as his own palace: it was imposing merely because of its immense dimensions. It consisted of a huge rectangular block of pure white marble, the walls of which were from eight to ten feet thick, without columns, or pediment, or even so much as a few pilasters to break up the monotonous smoothness and regularity of its exterior surface, the only aids in this direction being the great east doorway, or main entrance, which was some thirty feet wide by about sixty feet high, with an immense window opening on either ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... of the field batteries where the men, stripped to the waist, were serving the guns, running the shells in and discharging their weapons with marvelous smoothness, speed and precision. ...
— Army Boys in the French Trenches • Homer Randall
... fine voice had regained its smoothness,—"once in New York I dropped in at Dick's studio when he did not expect me. I wanted him to take me out to luncheon; and I had the oddest experience! Oh! Mr. Devant, look at that bit, pinned to the wall! That is really exquisite! Well, as I was saying, I stole in upon Dick. I called from ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock
... again the mouth and chin, or the turn of the throat; there is never any ensemble of features and adornments. And as for Hillard, he really had nothing definite to recall, unless it was the striking color of her hair or the mellow smoothness of her voice. And could he really remember these? He often wished that she had sung ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... no denying that the first notion suggested by the word polish is that of smoothness, which will indeed be the sole idea associated with it before we begin to contemplate the matter. But when we consider what things are chosen to be "clothed upon" with this smoothness, then we find that the smoothness is scarcely desired for its own sake, ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... the camps, and Urrea stepped forward. He gave Ned only a single glance, but it made the boy writhe inwardly. The young Mexican was now all smoothness and courtesy, although Ned was sure that the cruel Spanish strain was there, hidden under his smiling air, but ready to ...
— The Texan Scouts - A Story of the Alamo and Goliad • Joseph A. Altsheler
... compartment, where he read a newspaper until he got tired and lifting a corner of the blind looked out. Here and there a light rushed back through the darkness and vanished as the express sped south with a smoothness that was a contrast to the jolting he had been used to in Canada. Indeed, except for the roar when they ran across a bridge and the confused flashing past of lamps as they swept through a station, he could hardly have imagined himself on board ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss
... a spreading larch, on the summit of a mound which commanded a wide prospect of plain and morass, sat an Indian woman. She might have been taken for an old woman, so worn and thin was she, and so hollow were her cheeks; but the glossy blackness of her hair, the smoothness of her brow, and the glitter of her dark eyes told that she was yet ...
— The Crew of the Water Wagtail • R.M. Ballantyne
... of old umbrellas. All wore dust-coloured shoes. My heart beat high; for, in those four male personages, although complexionless and eyebrowless, I beheld four subjects of the Family P. Salcy. Blue- bearded though they were, and bereft of the youthful smoothness of cheek which is imparted by what is termed in Albion a 'Whitechapel shave' (and which is, in fact, whitening, judiciously applied to the jaws with the palm of the hand), I recognised them. As I stood admiring, there emerged from the yard of a lowly Cabaret, ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... for feeling and music. The very smoothness and gentleness of the limbs is in the ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... That turns earth's smoothness rough, Each sting, that bids not sit nor stand but ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... acquirements, in the limited field in which Donizetti's opera called them into activity, at least, are of the highest rank. Her style is exquisite, and plainly the outgrowth of a thoroughly musical nature. It unites some of the highest elements of art. Such reposefulness of manner, such smoothness and facility in execution, such perfect balance of tone and refinement of expression can be found only in one richly endowed with deep musical feeling and ripe artistic intelligence. She carries her voice wondrously well throughout a wide register, and from her lowest note to ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... that all glue spots are removed and all surfaces sanded to perfect smoothness. If a fumed finish is not desired, any good stain may be used, after which a thin coat of shellac and two coats of wax should be applied. Allow plenty of time ...
— Mission Furniture - How to Make It, Part I • H. H. Windsor
... soft waves of her hair swept his face, now the satin smoothness of her cheek lay against his. Lips met lips again and again, and never for a moment did the clasp of that firm embrace relax. The dead blank hopelessness of life and its conditions, then, had still contained this, had culminated in this? As he thus held her to him, as ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... Gertrude's nature, that with her, he, to a certain degree, succeeded in his kindly attempt. Quickly alive to the charms of scenery, she entered by degrees into the external beauties which every turn in the road opened to their view; and the silvery smoothness of the river, that made the constant attraction of the landscape, the serenity of the time, and the clearness of the heavens, tended to tranquillize a mind that, like a sunflower, so instinctively turned from ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... dark complexion, either from constant exposure to wind and sun, or, as his black hair and dark eyes tended to show, from some strain of southern blood. His head was small, his face of an exquisite beauty of modeling, while the smoothness of its contour would have led you to believe that he was a beardless lad still in his teens. But something, some look which living and experience alone can give, seemed to contradict that, and finding yourself completely puzzled as to his age, you would next moment ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... smoothness everything had moved toward the desired end. To be sure, the tenure of the peninsula was only by lease, and in no way different from that of Shantung by Germany. There was no pretext in sight for garrisoning the dismantled fort at Port Arthur, but the fates had hitherto ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele
... dependence; it was so much easier to be good-natured than to contend. As for Miss Roxy, if you have ever carefully examined a chestnut-burr, you will remember that, hard as it is to handle, no plush of downiest texture can exceed the satin smoothness of the fibres which line its heart. There are a class of people in New England who betray the uprising of the softer feelings of our nature only by an increase of outward asperity—a sort of bashfulness and shyness leaves them no power of expression for these unwonted guests ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... old soldier found the words crowding to the tip end of his tongue. His keen eyes shone, and he regarded with a most kindly gaze the lad who, to make life a little easier for his mother, had faced jeers and contempt and had turned himself into a girl—a kitchen girl. It was not with his usual smoothness, but quite abruptly, that he began: "Pat, you are to ...
— The Widow O'Callaghan's Boys • Gulielma Zollinger
... cry, 'Abba! Father! show me yet more of Thy heart.' Thus aspiration and fruition, longing and satisfaction in unsatiated and inexhaustible and unwearying alternation, are the two blessed poles between which the life of a Christian may revolve in smoothness and music. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... Barlow have almost reconstructed the machine, strengthening and improving those parts which experience showed it was necessary to modify. As a result their improved machine works at a high speed (80 to 95 strokes per minute, according to the class of cotton), with great smoothness and without noise, and from the almost complete absense of vibration the risk of breakages is reduced to a ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 481, March 21, 1885 • Various
... criticism of the needlework, while round her neck she wore a collar with embroidery, Pao-y readily pressed his face against the nape of her neck, and as he sniffed the perfume about it, he did not stay his hand from stroking her neck, which in whiteness and smoothness was not below that of Hsi Jen; and as he approached her, "My dear girl," he said smiling and with a drivelling face, "do let me lick the cosmetic off your mouth!" clinging to her person, as he uttered these words, like ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... Mary," she exclaimed again, "this tells of an exploring expedition leaving New York. Maybe that is a report of your folks and the professor! See, it reads," and she pressed the very much crinkled pieces to something of smoothness. ...
— The Girl Scouts at Bellaire - Or Maid Mary's Awakening • Lilian C. McNamara Garis
... himself up a voluntary captive to the sway of his own passions, determining to enjoy the immediate present, no matter what the future might have in store. Outside, the water-lilies nodded themselves to sleep in their shrouding, dark leaves, . . and the unbroken smoothness of the lake spread itself out in the moon like a sheet of molten gold over the spot where Nir-jalis had found his chilly rest. "THE CURSE OF THE DEAD NIR-JALIS SHALL CLING!" Yes,—possibly!—in the hereafter! ... but now his parting ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... Hearing a movement in the passage Villon threw open the door, closing it again behind Ursula de Vesc. Then he leaned against it like one interested but indifferent in his interest. The girl was pitifully pale. Double lines of care creased the smoothness of the forehead; the weariness she had plead had been no pretence, but was written plainly in the languid gait, the drooped lids, and the dark patches beneath the eyes. By her side walked Charlemagne, and half a yard behind the three puppies ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... drifted to leeward with the change of times, Butler incurred the censure of his father-in-law; and sometimes the disputes betwixt them became eager and almost unfriendly. In all such cases Mrs Butler was a mediating spirit, who endeavoured, by the alkaline smoothness of her own disposition, to neutralise the acidity of theological controversy. To the complaints of both she lent an unprejudiced and attentive ear, and sought always rather to excuse than absolutely ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... were metal, enameled to the smoothness of the body, and jointed, though the joints were almost invisible. The statue was one of those marvelous creations of the ancient priests, and once, no doubt, it had stood behind the veil in some Egyptian temple to tempt and to punish the curiosity ...
— The False Gods • George Horace Lorimer
... calm correctness where no fault we see Attests Art's loftiest—or its least degree; Alike the smoothness of the surface shows The Pool's dull stagnor—the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... of air was stirring; the red hills smouldered in the heat, and the waters of Genesareth at our feet glimmered with an oily smoothness, unbroken by a ripple. We untwisted our turbans, kicked off our baggy trowsers, and speedily releasing ourselves from the barbarous restraints of dress, dipped into the tepid sea and floated lazily out until we could feel the exquisite coldness of the living springs which sent up their jets ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... to personal pronouns. But there are no terms in common use which have so rough and loose a meaning, which cover so equivocal and confused an experience; albeit the necessity and frequency of their use has made them standard currency and polished them into a sort of deceptive smoothness to the touch. There is no term so altogether handy as the term "I," nor is there any so embarrassed when called on to show its credentials in the shape of clear and verifiable experience. If, then, you stand upon your interests ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... keep them for a reward if you behave well." She slipped an arm over the beautifully arched neck and laid her face against the satiny smoothness. Shashai approved the caress but would have approved the ...
— Peggy Stewart: Navy Girl at Home • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... want to sell the house, y'understand, let me know; that's all." As he passed out of the door he laid the cigar on a side table and its bright red band immediately caught the eye of Uncle Mosha. He pounced on it and was about to hurl it after his departing visitor when something about the smoothness of the wrapper made him pause. Five minutes later he lolled back in a horsehair-covered rocker and puffed contentedly at Morris's cigar. "After all," he said, "I might get a good price ...
— Abe and Mawruss - Being Further Adventures of Potash and Perlmutter • Montague Glass
... unresponsive and cold. Day after day the plates before the doubled lookouts and observers remained blank. Power flowed smoothly and unfailingly into the cosmic receptors, and the products of conversion were discharged with equal smoothness and regularity from the forty-five gigantic driving projectors. The tractor beam held its heavy burden easily and the generators functioned perfectly. And finally a planet began to loom up in ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... fine outer hairs, gleaming transparent, made her seem outlined in flame—she was a glorified, a transfigured cow, a cow for the gods. In a newly-turned field beyond a man and a boy were planting young broccoli; they worked with the swiftness and smoothness of a machine, the man making a succession of holes with his spud as he walked along, the boy dropping in the plants on the instant. From where Ishmael sat the boy and his basket were hidden behind the man, and it looked as though wherever that shining spud touched ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... why, one why, he was so glad to get me the burro. He hopes it will stop me some. But in a home a body must remember it isn't his home nor her home, but the home of everybody that belongs. If I should be naughty, it would throw things all out of—of smoothness, don't you know. I can't be naughty all by myself. If I could—no, I wouldn't like it either. When I'm selfish or bad, I always feel as if I had on a dirty apron, and I do just ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... she, but an angel or a fiend, perhaps—who knows?—something of both. The quarrelets of pearl flashed through her scarlet smile, and as her mouth moved the dimples sank and filled by turns in the blush-rose softness of her exquisite cheek. Over the even smoothness of her half-uncovered shoulders played a floating gloss as of agate, and a river of large pearls, not greatly different in hue from her neck, descended towards her breast. Now and then she raised her head with a peacock-like gesture, and ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... useless and dangerous structure ever come to develop in a body in which for the most part there is mutual helpfulness, utility, and perfect smoothness of working through all the great machine? To attempt to answer this would carry us very far back into ancient history. But to make such backward search is absolutely the only means of ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... beauty.—Beyond the city, in the alluring country places, we see a landscape that delights the senses, ornate with hedges, flowers, vine-clad cottages, highways of surpassing smoothness, fertile fields, and thrifty flocks and herds. There are carts and wagons on the roads bearing the products of field and garden to the marts of trade. Men, women, and children zealously ply the hoe, the plow, or the shovel, ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... representative. In the little that we are privileged to read of Mozart's style of playing, we see only a reflex of the players who went before him, saving as it was permeated by the warmth which went out from his own genial personality. His manipulation of the keys had the quietness and smoothness that were praised in Bach ...
— How to Listen to Music, 7th ed. - Hints and Suggestions to Untaught Lovers of the Art • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... Geranium, by Botanists here, and that on account of the smooth and glossy appearance of its leaves; in that work Mr. AITON adopts the word anemonefolium, by which Mons. L. HERITIER had distinguished this species, from an idea that their shape afforded a more expressive character than their smoothness. We regret that the small size of our plate will not admit of our giving representation of those leaves, and of their mode of growth, which so strikingly characterizes the plant and adds so ...
— The Botanical Magazine, Vol. 6 - Or, Flower-Garden Displayed • William Curtis
... spine. He knew that his eyes had flashed defiance before he had quelled their impulse and controlled his features, but he held his lips tight for a rebellious moment and when he opened them he asked with a velvety smoothness: ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... remoteness and perfection. The landscape was clothed in a mild and quiet light, in which the woods and fences checkered and partitioned it with new regularity, and rough and uneven fields stretched away with lawn-like smoothness to the horizon, and the clouds, finely distinct and picturesque, seemed a fit drapery to hang over fairy-land. The world seemed decked for some holiday or prouder pageantry, with silken streamers flying, and the course of our lives to wind on before ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... process must be added the positive, namely—attention to the due and proportionate development of all the vocal organs. Depth is increased by the expansion of the pharynx; roundness and volume are promoted by the enlargement of the oral cavity, especially its back part; and smoothness is the result of the free vibration of the vocal chords, while resonance is produced by the ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... ago, and yet so far as Ester and her future—yes, and the future of every one about her was concerned, things were very different. Perhaps Sadie had a glimmering of some strange change as she eyed her sister curiously, and took note that there was a different light in her eye, and a sort of smoothness on the quiet face that she had never noticed before. In fact, Sadie missed some wrinkles which she had supposed were part and parcel of ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)
... dark side-streets as though she were creeping along moorland paths. Her thought was dulled to everything but physical discomfort and the illness which menaced the beloved. Woman's eternal agony for the sick of her family had transformed the trim smoothness of the office-woman's face into wrinkles that were tragic and ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... airplanes were called, with propeller whirling, lumbered over the ground; the smoothness of flying came to it and, deafened to everything but the clatter of the motor and the thrash of the air-screw, Hal gazed down. Points of light, yellow and red and some almost white, glowed on the ground. Some ...
— The Boy Allies with Haig in Flanders • Clair W. Hayes
... started with a bound, and they flew on through the dusk, gathering smoothness and speed as they went, with the hollow night opening out below them and the air singing by like an organ. Mattie sat perfectly still, but as they reached the bend at the foot of the hill, where the big elm thrust out a deadly elbow, he fancied ...
— Ethan Frome • Edith Wharton
... said Sancho, "for I have taken the beards and tears of these ladies deeply to heart, and I shan't eat a bit to relish it until I have seen them restored to their former smoothness. Mount, your worship, and blindfold yourself, for if I am to go on the croup, it is plain the rider in the saddle ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... dreamland! But what peril to me, and perhaps to him. It is vain to go over it all: it is enough that of all the happy days, that hour from six o'clock till tea-time was the happiest: and that with strange smoothness, day after day passed on without bringing interruption to it. At six the others went to ride or walk; I was never called, and did not even ...
— Richard Vandermarck • Miriam Coles Harris
... picturesque, but it was intensely gloomy; the proper spot for a catastrophe rather than a happy denouement. I was not impressionable, of course; but now that I thought of it, our jaunt had been going with a smoothness almost ominous. Could one expect such clock-like regularity to run forever ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... while Bruff would utter a remonstrant growl, for Jack would set to work trying to solve the problem why the dog's curly coat would not lie down smooth and straight; and in his efforts to produce that smoothness that he was accustomed to see upon his own skin, he sometimes tugged vigorously enough to ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn
... professes to have robed Virgil in "a homespun English gray-coat plain," says of his manner, "I have aimed at these three things, perspicuity of the matter, fidelity to the author, and facility or smoothness to recreate thee my reader. Now if any critical or curious wit tax me with a Frustra fit per plura &c. and blame my not curious confinement to my author line for line, I answer (and I hope this answer will satisfy the moderate ...
— Early Theories of Translation • Flora Ross Amos
... ascendancy of his sentiments, when imperiously pronounced, to think it necessary to take precautions against a sinister event. For myself, I drew a favourable omen as to the final result of my project, from the smoothness of success that attended it ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... nor figure is definitive. Even Bulliard fails us here, and is differently interpreted by different authors. Persoon's description is none too good, but is reenforced by Fries and Rostafinski. The capillitium is variable both in the degree of smoothness presented, and the number of free ends, and the amount of branching. The spores in all specimens we have examined are remarkably constant in size and surface. In typical specimens free ends are easily discoverable, the branching forms a definite ...
— The North American Slime-Moulds • Thomas H. (Thomas Huston) MacBride
... reflection. He was readily moved by the pathetic; at the most joyous hour, a melancholy incident would move him into tears. The tenderness of his heart was frequently imparted to his verses, which are uniformly distinguished for smoothness and simplicity. ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... was unexceptionable, his smile exquisite. Then he had dark moustaches, which he would gracefully finger into such an exact curve; and he had his small whiskers so neatly combed, and every hair on his head lay in unexceptional smoothness. The legation was not a little proud of Bolt, and on drawing-room days, when he blazed out in his gold lace and sword, would delight in watching the many dark, languishing eyes that would ogle him over the down of gorgeous fans. Bolt was not dead to this admiration, ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... lay the blue lake. He could already hear the murmur of its whispering shores, the roar of its circling forests, for the trees followed on and over through some low defile as if loath to lose the hills themselves, rising to heaven in virgin smoothness of ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... pulp contains pectin, which is what makes jelly jell, and berries and fruits that are short of it will refuse to "jell." But using these for their flavor he adds apple pulp for pectin and glucose for smoothness and sugar for sweetness and, if necessary, synthetic dyes for color, he is able to put on the market a variety of jellies, jams and marmalades at very low price. The same principle applies here as in the case of all compounded food products. If they are made in cleanly fashion, ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson
... early, washed himself, rubbed himself from head to foot with a wet sponge (a performance executed only on Sundays—and the day in question happened to be a Sunday), shaved his face with such care that his cheeks issued of absolutely satin-like smoothness and polish, donned first his bilberry-coloured, spotted frockcoat, and then his bearskin overcoat, descended the staircase (attended, throughout, by the waiter) and entered his britchka. With a loud rattle the vehicle left the inn-yard, and issued into the street. A passing priest ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... be placed in the loom so as to weave or interlace it with filling it must be sized. This is necessary for all single twist warp yarns. Its primary object is to increase the strength and smoothness of the thread, thus enabling it to withstand the strain and friction due to the weaving operation. Other objects of sizing are the increase of weight and bulk of the thread and the improvement and feel of the cloth. The ...
— Textiles • William H. Dooley
... flour with cold water, to a smooth paste, and boil it gently. It answers all the purposes of wheat flour paste, while it is far superior in point of transparency and smoothness. This composition, made with so small a proportion of water as to have it of the consistence of plastic clay, may be used to form models, busts, basso-relievos, and similar articles. When made of it, they are susceptible of a very high polish. Poland starch is a nice cement for pasting layers ...
— The American Housewife • Anonymous
... respects both Tibullus and Ovid may claim the advantage over Propertius: Tibullus for refined simplicity, for natural grace and exquisiteness of touch; Ovid for the technical merits of execution, for transparency of construction, for smoothness and polish of expression. But in all the higher qualities of a poet Propertius is as ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce
... whole body, we proceed to those of particular parts. The affections of the tongue appear to be caused by contraction and dilation, but they have more of roughness or smoothness than is found in other affections. Earthy particles, entering into the small veins of the tongue which reach to the heart, when they melt into and dry up the little veins are astringent if they are rough; or if not so rough, they are only harsh, and if excessively abstergent, like potash ...
— Timaeus • Plato
... circumstances; so why should there be any striving for effect? He gave it up. If the much talked of Egbert was what Judge Knowles had declared him to be, then neither the judge nor any one else had exaggerated his smoothness. ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... such grace of bodily beauty and such supple limbs. So, when they began the sea-fight, the young man Alf leapt on Alfhild's prow, and advanced towards the stern, slaughtering all that withstood him. His comrade Borgar struck off Alfhild's helmet, and, seeing the smoothness of her chin, saw that he must fight with kisses and not with arms; that the cruel spears must be put away, and the enemy handled with gentler dealings. So Alf rejoiced that the woman whom he had sought over land and sea in the face of so many dangers was now beyond ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... Oldbuck and his nephew deposited themselves in the Fairport hack, which, with one horse trotting, and the other urged to a canter, creaked, jingled, and hobbled towards that celebrated seaport, in a manner that formed a strong contrast to the rapidity and smoothness with which Lord Glenallan's equipage had seemed ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... sky was by this time overcast, the pond was so smooth that I could see where he broke the surface when I did not hear him. His white breast, the stillness of the air, and the smoothness of the water were all against him. At length, having come up fifty rods off, he uttered one of those prolonged howls, as if calling on the god of loons to aid him, and immediately there came a wind from the east and rippled the surface, and filled the whole air with misty rain, and I was impressed ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... screwed down the metal cap when the water-carrier had been caught by the wind and hurled along the ground. For several minutes its own smoothness had kept it moving, and had prevented it from lodging against anything and being buried, but each roll and jolt had spilt some of the water, till finally every drop had been wasted on the parched sand. Then, when all the ...
— In the Musgrave Ranges • Jim Bushman
... below; and had I not casually met with a few shrubs to grasp, I should probably have been obliged to abandon my attempt, or have rolled down the cliff. The summit of the eastern peak consists of one enormous mass of granite, the smoothness of which is broken only by a few partial fissures, presenting an appearance not unlike the ice-covered peaks of the Alps. The sides of the peak, at a few paces below its top, are formed of large insulated blocks twenty or thirty feet long, which appeared as if just suspended, in the act of rushing ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt
... was only the moment of which he could be sure. "You are here!" his eyes said to her, as she entered the room. "I have this hour at least. Nothing else matters." Then, by aid of the sunset, the warm breeze in his face, the flowers on the table, the fragrance of her perfume and the smoothness of her hand, he tried to drown himself in a sea of sensation, like one who listens, in a glamour of stained glass and a cloud of incense, to the protracted sweetness of an organ ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... of internationalism is possibly fraught with greater wonders than has been the past. The path will certainly not be laid out with the smoothness which some enthusiasts imagine. The idea and the hope are old as the hills. Cicero proclaimed a universal society of the human race. Seneca declared the world to be his country. Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius declared themselves citizens of the world. St. Paul explained ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... been ascribed to reflection from the crests of the sea-waves. But this hypothesis is negatived by the fact, that the echoes were produced in great intensity and duration when no waves existed—when the sea, in fact, was of glassy smoothness. It has been also shown that the direction of the echoes depended not on that of waves, real or assumed, but on the direction of the axis of the trumpet. Causing that axis to traverse an arc of 210 deg., and the trumpet to sound at various points of the ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... fine and clear with a light breeze, which, towards mid-day, dropped entirely, and the schooner lay rocking lazily on a sea of glassy smoothness. The sun beat fiercely down, bringing the fresh paint on the taffrail up in blisters, and sorely trying the tempers of the men who were doing odd ...
— Many Cargoes • W.W. Jacobs
... those that dwelt round the coast of the Mediterranean sea. That sea, by far the greatest inlet that is known in the world, having no tides, nor consequently any waves, except such as are caused by the wind only, was, by the smoothness of its surface, as well as by the multitude of its islands, and the proximity of its neighbouring shores, extremely favourable to the infant navigation of the world; when, from their ignorance of the compass, men were ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... said he did. He, too, felt a seething in his blood, the nip of life in every one of his pores! And his eyes ran over the bare neck in front of him, a neck of such tempting smoothness, its white beauty set off by the red kerchief; and over the violets resting on that strong, robust bosom. The two orchard women exchanged a shrewd smile, a meaningful wink, at sight of Rafael, and went on ahead of their mistress, with the evident design of not disturbing the couple ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... tea-table, some observations of Humboldt on this subject, the captain of the ship told us that he had once heard a single gun at sea at the distance of ninety nautical miles. The next morning, though a light breeze had sprung up from the north, the sea was of glassy smoothness when we went on deck. As we came up, an officer told us that he had heard a gun at sunrise, and the conversation of the previous evening suggested the inquiry whether it could have been fired from the combined French and English fleet then lying at Beshika Bay. Upon examination ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... unsuspected by plainer folk—the eyes of a poet or a house agent. He was quietly dressed—that sartorial quietude which frequently accompanies early adolescence, and is usually attributed by novel-writers to the influence of a widowed mother. His hair was brushed back in a smoothness as of ribbon seaweed and seamed with a narrow furrow that scarcely aimed at being a parting. His aunt particularly noted this item of his toilet when they met at the appointed rendezvous, because he was standing ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... naturally-curling tresses, setting forth the full force of the Homeric epithet, "hyacinthine!" I looked at the delicate outlines of the nose—and nowhere but in the graceful medallions of the Hebrews had I beheld a similar perfection. There were the same luxurious smoothness of surface, the same scarcely perceptible tendency to the aquiline, the same harmoniously curved nostrils speaking the free spirit. I regarded the sweet mouth. Here was indeed the triumph of all things heavenly—the magnificent turn of the short upper lip—the soft, voluptuous ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... and countenance were alike much more contemporaneous than his partner's. His dress was self-consciously fashionable, and he wore a carefully trained mustache, whose dark brown was beginning to show threads of gray. His cheeks and his forehead seemed in their smoothness as if coated with some impermeable and indestructible hard-finish. He had a resolute chin and a pair of hard, steel-gray eyes, which were set much too close together to leave great room for any attribution of an open-minded ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... while the train rolled over a track remarkable for its smoothness and leading ever onward across the vast, empty plains bare save for the low shrubs called sage-brush, and rising here and there into long ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... time when Bering's Strait was closed by land, it might be expected that those now found here would show relationship to the Kamtschatkan species (Ovis nivicola); and such is indeed the case, while furthermore, in the small size of the suborbital gland and pit, and in comparative smoothness of the horns, both species approach the bharal of Thibet and India, which in these respects ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various
... and slightly purgative properties of the oil contained in the seed. The change made in the appearance of the animals receiving some of the bolls in their steamed food is very apparent after a few weeks' trial; and the smoothness and sleekness of their shining coats plainly show the benefit derived. Is it not surprising, with this fact before our eyes, that many agriculturists—indeed, I fear the majority—persist in the old-fashioned system of taking the flax to a watering-place ...
— The Stock-Feeder's Manual - the chemistry of food in relation to the breeding and - feeding of live stock • Charles Alexander Cameron
... August a party of the officers endeavoured to get on one of the larger icebergs, but ineffectually, owing to the steepness and smoothness of its sides and the swell produced by its undulating motion. This was one of the largest we saw, and Mr. Hood ascertained its height to be one hundred and forty-nine feet; but these masses of ice are frequently magnified to an immense size through the illusive medium of a hazy atmosphere, ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin
... imagined, the stopped notes are weak and dull compared with the open. On the other hand, the tubing introduced for valves not being quite conformable in curve with the instrument, and hampered with indispensable joins, unless in the best form of modern valve, affects the smoothness of tone. No doubt there has been of late years a great improvement in the manufacture of valves. Many horns are still made with crooks covering an octave from B flat to B flat, 8 feet 6 inches to 17 feet; but most players now use only the F crook, and trust to the valves, rather ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 819 - Volume XXXII, Number 819. Issue Date September 12, 1891 • Various
... that had been rolling with oily smoothness now began to show little feathery crests of foam, and they were following one another with greater quickness, as if impatient to ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Sea - or, A Pictured Shipwreck That Became Real • Laura Lee Hope
... coal fire gave a sort of silent sound, rebuking the humanity that lived there. No noise was heard from below stairs; the middle-aged and well-trained servants did their work with the regularity and almost with the smoothness of machines. It occurred to Esther anew that her life was excessively quiet; and a thought of Pitt, and how good it would have been to see him, arose again, as it had risen so many times. And then came the thoughts of the afternoon. With ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... my voice had attracted attention by its smoothness and modulation, and I was greatly surprised to hear Wauna speak of its unmusical tone as really annoying. But then in Mizora there are no voices but what are sweet enough ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley
... became incapacitated for a month. Sir W. Robertson thereupon called me in to act as locum tenens. From many points of view this proved to be a particularly edifying and instructive experience. One could not fail to be impressed with the smoothness with which the military side of the War Office was working under the system which Sir William had introduced, and one furthermore found oneself behind the scenes in respect to the progress of the war and to numbers of matters only ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... was engaged on a work of such magnitude, and it is amusing to see his friend Holroyd warn him against a hasty and immature publication when he learned that the book was in the press. He had apparently heard little of it before. This alone would show with what ease and smoothness Gibbon must have worked. He had excellent health—a strange fact after his sickly childhood; society unbent his mind instead of distracting it; his stomach was perfect—perhaps too good, as about this time he began to be admonished by the gout. He never seems to ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison
... more important fact, the keenly accurate observation of Aryan foresters at that early date; for the fact is that the breaking of the thin-beaten silver of the birch trunk is so delicate, and its smoothness so graceful, that until I painted it with care, I was not altogether clear-headed myself about the way in which the chequering was done: nor until Fors today brought me to the house of one of my father's friends at Carshalton, and gave me three birch stems to look at just outside ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... in return, the legend is so visible, that, at the first look, you can see whose image and superscription they bear." This is a delicate way of setting forth the superior honesty and bluntness and the inferior smoothness and assimilating instinct of the Anglo-Saxon,—a vital difference, which no alliance or intercourse with his Gallic ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... architraves to the doors. What a place for a sane man to build in bleak old Delverton, even before there was any Northborough to blacken and foul the north-east wind on its way from the sea! What a place for a sane man to buy; and yet, in its cool white smoothness, its glaring individuality, its ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... death, nor chains affright; brave in the checking of his appetites, and in contemning honors; and, perfect in himself, polished and round as a globe, so that nothing from without can retard, in consequence of its smoothness; against whom misfortune ever advances ineffectually. Can you, out of these, recognize any thing applicable to yourself? A woman demands five talents of you, plagues you, and after you are turned ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... healthy, well-cared-for appearance of a country-dweller who has been turned into a town dandy without suffering in the process. His blue- black hair, growing very low down on a broad forehead, was brushed back in a smoothness that gave his head the appearance of a rain-polished sloe; his eyebrows were two dark smudges and his large violet-grey eyes expressed the restful good temper of an animal whose immediate requirements ...
— When William Came • Saki
... Boyd,—... As to 'The Lost Bower,' I am penitent about having caused you so much disturbance. I sometimes fancy that a little varying of the accents, though at the obvious expense of injuring the smoothness of every line considered separately, gives variety of cadence and fuller harmony to the general effect. But I do not question that I deserve a great deal of blame on this point as on others. Many lines in 'Isobel's Child' are very slovenly and weak from a multitude of causes. I hope you ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... on in smoothness, in thorough contrast with the violent ups and downs of Beethoven's mind and music, for he was, as Stratton says, "on the most excellent terms with himself," as with the world in general. He was extremely sensitive to criticism ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... young men were perfect models in shape, of a complexion as delicate as that of the women, and, to appearance, of a disposition as amiable. Others, who were more advanced in years, were corpulent; and all had a remarkable smoothness of the skin. Their general dress was a piece of cloth, or mat, wrapped about the waist, and covering the parts which modesty conceals. But some had pieces of mats, most curiously varied with black ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... astonishing how well everybody bore his departure. My mother scarcely spoke on the subject; but along the irrefragable smoothness of her temperament all things glided without resistance to their course, or trace where they had been. Gerald, who, occupied solely in rural sports or rustic loves, seldom mingled in the festivities of the house, was equally silent on the subject. Aubrey looked grieved for a day ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... ice the Luggie growls, And to the polished smoothness curlers come Rudely ambitious. Then for happy hours The clinking stones are slid from wary hands, And Barleycorn, best wine for surly airs, Bites i' th' mouth, and ancient jokes are cracked. And oh, the journey ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow, Vol. IV (of IV) • Harrison S. Morris
... put down the hairbrush and inspected the razors on their shelf. The bright morning light flashed along the rubbed fine blades; they were beautiful, flawless, without a trace of defilement. He felt the satin smoothness of the steel with an actual thrill of pleasure; his eyes narrowed until they were like the glittering points of knives; he held the razor firmly and easily, with a sinewy ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... granddaughter knelt weeping. There was a strong family resemblance between them. Seeing them side by side, you thought of two beautiful Greek medals struck from the same matrix, but one old and worn and the other bright and clear-cut with all the brilliancy and smoothness of a first impression. ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... Rix was a fox of the first quality. He lied with the smoothness of silk. He could show a dozen colors in as many moments. Come to the windward of Joe Rix? It was a delicate business! But since there was nothing else to do, she fixed her mind upon it, working out this puzzle. Joe Rix wished to destroy Donnegan for reasons that were ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand
... back to his corner. Never to her did he seem less a fighter than then. His eyes were too mild; there was not a spark of the beast in them, nor in his face, while his body seemed too fragile, what of its fairness and smoothness, and his face too boyish and sweet-tempered and intelligent. She did not have the expert's eye for the depth of chest, the wide nostrils, the recuperative lungs, and the muscles under their satin sheaths—crypts of energy wherein lurked the chemistry of destruction. To her he looked like a ...
— The Game • Jack London
... by the flavour of it: afterwards the appetites of hunger and of thirst afford pleasure by the possession of their objects, and by the subsequent digestion of the aliment; and, lastly, the sense of touch is delighted by the softness and smoothness of the milky fountain, the source of ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... looked at him, rather gravely, he thought; sometimes she looked at the stream. There was not the slightest hint of embarrassment in her manner as she stood there—a straight, tall, young thing, grey-eyed, red-lipped, slim, with that fresh slender smoothness of youth; clad in grey wool, hatless, thick burnished hair rippling into a heavy knot at the nape of the whitest neck he had ...
— The Gay Rebellion • Robert W. Chambers
... elbow on his knees, his chin in his hand, his wings drooping behind, along the perpendicular smoothness of the rock, and pondered his happiness. A profound satisfaction was within him; it was as if his blood, at last, were flowing submissively along a great cosmic stream, to some eternal behest. After a time, he rose a-tip-toe, like a diver above ...
— The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper
... examine objects by feeling of them with a stick held in the hand, and thus perceive their roughness or smoothness; but how do we sense these facts? It seems to us as if we felt them with the end of the stick, but that is absurd, since there are no sense organs in the stick. It must be that we perceive the roughness by means of sensations arising in the hand and arm, but to identify these sensations is a much ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... and had stayed overnight as darkness overtook them along the way. He had hit every destination on the nose, on time. And now the end of the trip was in sight without a single incident to mar its smoothness. ...
— The Wailing Octopus • Harold Leland Goodwin
... make seeming failures but trifles, they need not dishearten us; they should prove sources of new strength. The rocky way may prove safer than the slippery path of smoothness. Birds cannot fly best with the wind but against it; ships do not progress in calm, when the sails flap idly against ...
— The Majesty of Calmness • William George Jordan
... shall examine is touch, which, of all the external senses, is the most simple, as well as the most generally diffused. By means of this sense, we are capable of perceiving various qualities and properties of bodies, such as hardness, softness, roughness, smoothness, temperature, magnitude, figure, distance, pressure, and weight; this sense is seldom depraved; because the bodies, whose properties are examined by it, are applied immediately to the extremities of the nerves, without the intervention of any medium liable to be deranged, as is the case with ...
— Popular Lectures on Zoonomia - Or The Laws of Animal Life, in Health and Disease • Thomas Garnett
... surfaces, too, fall within the range of linear expression. One would naturally use lines of totally different consistency and character to express rough or smooth surfaces: to express the difference of value, for instance, between the ivory-like smoothness of an egg and the scaly surface of a pine-cone, entirely different qualities of line are obviously wanted. The firm-set yet soft feathers of the plumage of a bird must be rendered by a very different touch from ...
— Line and Form (1900) • Walter Crane
... stone; and it receives shadows with great beauty, a point of infinite importance in this climate; giving them lightness and transparency, without any diminution of depth. It is also agreeable to the eye, to pass from the sharp carving of the marble decorations to the ease and smoothness of the stucco; while the utter want of interest in those parts which are executed in it prevents the humility of the material from being offensive: for this passage of the eye from the marble to the composition is managed with the dexterity of the artist, who, that the attention ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... witness to his excellence as a player, and his great command over the piano-forte, and his own remarks on piano-playing are full of point and suggestion. He asserts "that the performer should possess a quiet and steady hand, with its natural lightness, smoothness, and gliding rapidity so well developed that the passages should flow like oil.... All notes, graces, accents, etc., should be brought out with fitting taste and expression.... In passages [technical figures], some notes may be left ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris
... the whole world had been wrapped in a blanket of the whitest, fleeciest, shiningest wool. Sidewalks, streets, crossings were all leveled to one smoothness. The fences were so muffled that they had swelled to twice their size. The houses wore trim, pointy caps on their gables. The high bushes in the yard hung to the very ground. The low ones had become mounds. The trees looked as if they had been packed in cotton-wool ...
— Maida's Little Shop • Inez Haynes Irwin
... and he was compelled to acknowledge his own remissness when he perceived that he lay within the reach of the shot of his powerful foe, though still so distant as to render her also a little uncertain, more especially should a set get up. The felucca had burnt to the water's edge; but, owing to the smoothness of the water, her wreck still floated and was slowly setting into the bay, there being a slight current in that direction, where she now lay. The town was basking in the afternoon's sun, though hid from view, and the whole ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper |
