"Span" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... comparatively little change in human structure or human interest in historical times. It is a popular view that moral and cultural views and interests have superseded our animal instincts; but the cultural period is only a span in comparison with prehistoric times and the prehuman period of life, and it seems probable that types of psychic reaction were once for all developed and fixed; and while objects of attention and interest in different historical periods are different, we shall never get far away from the ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas
... and go on into the future making the best of his life, maimed and marred as it was by his own folly. He was still in the prime of his age, thirty years younger than Mr. Clifford, whose intellect was as keen and clear as ever; there was a long span of time stretching before him, to be ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... 'musts' together," said Polly decisively, "and then build a bridge over them, or tunnel through them, or span them with an arch. We 'll keep thinking about it, and I'm sure something will turn up; I 'm not discouraged a bit. You see, Edgar," and Polly's face flushed with feeling as she drew patterns on the tablecloth with her tortoise-shell hairpin,—"you see, of course, the good fairies are not going to ...
— Polly Oliver's Problem • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... old adage that "many hands make light work," and it is equally true that they turn off a lot of it, so at the end of half an hour the old peoples' wood pile was in apple pie order and the yard was in a spick and span condition. ...
— Ethel Morton's Holidays • Mabell S. C. Smith
... peculiarly personal thing and appertains in a peculiar way to a particular time. And the circumstance that it has stood untouched by the passing years while everything around has changed, helps the imagination to span the interval. And the common headstone, the memorial of some dead and gone farmer or labourer who lived and died in the village hard by, is still more intimate and suggestive. The rustic, childish sculpture of the village mason and the ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... some minutes, she would listen to the ticking of the American clock on the mantelpiece. Her mind went back to the vigil she had spent during Miss Nippett's kit night of life. Then, it had seemed as if the clock were remorselessly eager to diminish the remaining moments of the accompanist's allotted span. Now, it appeared to Mavis as if the clock were equally desirous of cutting short the moments that must elapse ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... profound consequences, the iron grip of the political bureaucracy will make a fair examination difficult. It is no accident that other attempts at change, especially those that ask for or are tainted with reform, have had a short life span. It is interesting to note in this regard that the President's Commission on Intelligence and its fine report that recommended changes and refinements to the U.S. intelligence community, despite a very positive initial reception, led to ...
— Shock and Awe - Achieving Rapid Dominance • Harlan K. Ullman and James P. Wade
... the span of life allotted to man. After many small warnings his thumb weakens. He neglects that; and he gets touches of paralysis in the thumb, the arm, and the nerves of the stomach; can't digest; can't sweat; at last, can't work; goes to the hospital: there they ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... washes his hands with Cincinnati soap in a Pennsylvania basin; sits down to a Grand Rapids table; eats Battle Creek breakfast food and Chicago bacon cooked on a Michigan range; puts New York harness on a span of Missouri mules and hitches them to a South Bend wagon, or starts up his Illinois tractor with a Moline plow attached. After the day's work he rides down town in a Detroit automobile, buys a box of St. Louis candy for his wife, and spins back home, where he listens to ...
— Best Short Stories • Various
... dash is equal to three dots; the space between the parts of the same letters is equal to a dot; that between two letters to three dots; and between two words to five dots. You must train your ear until the span of these intervals becomes unmistakable. When you get some skill and are ready to try out what you can do, you will find that there are several ways of getting wider practice. There are, for example, ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett
... Whittaker as he left the train, spick and span in tweed and polished shoes appealed to Jerrard's sense of the ludicrous so acutely that the president, following the baggage-laden guide down to the shore of the lake, stopped and looked at his friend ...
— The Rainy Day Railroad War • Holman Day
... for we soon saw that both were far-and-away better than common, and we were selfish. Nor did the man himself seem to care for more patronage. He was always ready when we wished to go, and jumped from his spick-and-span deck to meet us with a smile that started us off in sunshine, no matter what the weather. And with my affection for the lovely, uneven coast and the seas that held it in their flashing fingers, grew ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... the world. For there, as it is most narow, it is more than a myle of brede. And thanne entren men azen into the lond of the grete Chane. That ryvere gothe thorghe the lond of Pigmaus: where that the folk ben of litylle stature, that ben but 3 span long: and thei ben right faire and gentylle, aftre here quantytees, bothe the men and the wommen. And thei maryen hem, whan thei ben half zere of age, and geten children. And thei lyven not, but 6 zeer or 7 at the moste. And he that lyvethe 8 zeer men holden him there righte passynge ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation. v. 8 - Asia, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... human life. Holy Scripture honours it in those 'wise-hearted women' who 'did spin with their hands, and brought that which they had spun' for the construction of the Tabernacle in the wilderness: and an old English proverb carries it still farther back to the time 'when Adam delved and Eve span.' But, at last, this time-honoured domestic manufacture is quite extinct amongst us—crushed by the power of steam, overborne by a countless host of spinning jennies, and I can only just remember some of its last struggles for ...
— Memoir of Jane Austen • James Edward Austen-Leigh
... [19] Span., La puso en el cofrecillo secreto del acuerdo; literally "placed it in the secret drawer of ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 • Emma Helen Blair
... loaded on a platform-car, and a hasty retreat was made across the Tennessee by the railroad bridge; but before all the Confederate troops had succeeded in crossing Leadbetter caused to be exploded two hundred pounds of powder, with a view of blowing up the east span of the bridge. The explosion did not do the work, hence the drawbridge at the east end was fired, to complete its destruction.( 9) But few captures were made. Leadbetter also abandoned his camp east of the river, ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... days, how large the mind of man; A godlike force enclosed within a span! To climb the skies we spurn our nature's clog, And toil as Titans to ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... often hundreds of feet high,—so narrow in places that where softer rocks are found below they have crumbled away and left holes in the wall, forming passages from one canyon into another. These we often call natural bridges; but they were never intended to span streams. They would better, perhaps, be called side doors between canyon chambers. Piles of broken rock lie against these walls; crags and tower-shaped peaks are seen everywhere, and away above them, long lines of broken cliffs; and above and beyond the cliffs are pine ...
— Canyons of the Colorado • J. W. Powell
... stand him for dress—and, moreover, he's given to liquor and card-playin', and is altogether goin' to the bad. Widin the last two or three days he has bought himself a new hat, a new pair o' brogues, and a pair o' span-new breeches—and, upon my conscience, it wasn't from me or mine he got the money to ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... very diversified, since no two bridges are alike. At one time he might be ordered to span a stream in the midst of a populous country where every aid is at hand, and his next commission might be the building of a difficult bridge in a foreign wilderness far beyond the edge ...
— Stories of Inventors - The Adventures Of Inventors And Engineers • Russell Doubleday
... chatting, bracelets jingling, and tiny bells at their ankles tinkling musically. It depressed him; it was such a terrible juxtaposition of frivolity and the gloomed shadow of idol worship that lay just the bridge's span of the sullen Narbudda: the gloomy, broken scraps of the long since deserted forts that cut with jagged lines the moonlit sky; and beyond them again the many temples with their scowling Brahmin priests, and the shrine wherein the god of destruction, Omkar, sat athirst for sacrifice. He shivered ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... religious ideas. Between the spiritual aspiration of a rude but simple race and the degraded ritual of an intellectually cultured but spiritually dead people, lies a gulf which only the term religion, used in its widest acceptation, can span. Nevertheless it is this consecutive process of generation and degeneration which has to be traced in the history of the ...
— The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria • W. Scott-Elliot
... pintu, that is, the price of admission. Of this price the Government has a share, and its revenues from this source are some hundred thousand pesos a year. It is said this license fee of vice serves to build schools, open roads, span rivers, and establish prizes for the encouragement of industry. Blessed be vice when it produces so happy results! In this entry are found girls selling buyo, cigars, and cakes. Here gather numerous children, brought by their fathers or uncles, ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... pack to rest his aching shoulders. But there was no resting the ache in his heart. Nor was it restful to gaze upon any of these things within the span of his eye. He was reminded of too much which it was not good to remember. As he sat staring down on the distant Rock and a troubled sea with an intolerable heaviness in his breast, he recalled that so must his father have looked ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... soldiers, it was ill commanded, and, therefore, unfit to meet such a master of war as Napoleon. Two battles were fought at Jena and Auerstadt, by which the Prussian power was overthrown; more than 50,000 men were slain. These battles were followed by the capture of Erfurt, Span-dau, Potsdam, Berlin, Luben, Stettin, Kuestrin, Hameln, Nienburg, and Magdeburg; and by victories over Prince Hohenlohe, near Prenzlow; and over the reserve army of Brucher, towards the lower Elbe. Within six weeks after the battle of Jena, all the country, from the Rhine ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... windy passage dries the hanging tear; Perchance, some wandering memories, some regrets; Then a vast influx of consoling thoughts— Based on the trials of the sadder days Which the dead missed; and then a smiling face Turned on to-morrow. Such is mortal grief. It writes its histories within a span, And never lives to ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... and took a key from a box. "I'll show you your locker," he said; and presently Bonbright, minus his coat, was incased in the uniform of a laborer. Spick and span and new it was, and gave him a singularly uncomfortable feeling because of this fact. He wanted it grimed and daubed like the overalls of the men he saw about him. A boyish impulse to smear it moved him—but he was ashamed to do ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... been a lawyer in Albany, State of New York, and as such had thriven well. He had thriven well as long as thrift and thriving on this earth had been allowed to him. But the Almighty had seen fit to shorten his span. ...
— The Courtship of Susan Bell • Anthony Trollope
... find out. Mr. Minturn, come with me and don a pair of overalls. You shan't put me to shame, wearing that spick-and-span suit, neither shall you spoil it. Oh, you're in for it now! You might have escaped, and come another day, when I could have received you in state and driven you out behind father's frisky bays. When you return to town with blistered hands and aching bones, you will ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... received him with the warmest professions of joy and duty; that the important place of Ravenna had surrendered without resistance, and that the Hadriatic fleet was in the hands of the conqueror. The enemy was now within two hundred and fifty miles of Rome; and every moment diminished the narrow span of life and empire ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... where is the oldest animal in the world, and the one that has travelled most, the Eagle of Gwern Abwy.' The Eagle was so old, that a rock, from the top of which he pecked at the stars every evening, was now not so much as a span high. He knew nothing of Mabon; but there was a monster Salmon, into whom he once struck his claws in Llyn Llyw, who might, perhaps, tell them something of him. And at last the Salmon of Llyn Llyw told them of Mabon. 'With every tide I go ...
— Celtic Literature • Matthew Arnold
... pailows, those big, red lacquer memorial arches that span the streets all over the place—arch, by the way, being a figure of speech, since actually these arches are square, and consist of two upright posts with a third laid horizontally across them. They are emblazoned all over with gilded characters and sprawling dragons, and honor some great Chinese,—erected ...
— Peking Dust • Ellen N. La Motte
... him fiddle an' fool along de branch, an' play a tune, an' up dey comes, an' he cotch 'em in he hans. He war mighty sot on Dicey, an' dey war married all proper an' reg'lar. Hit war so long ago, dat de railroad war a bran-new spick an' span ting in dose days. Dicey once she lounge 'round de track, 'cause she tink she hear Orpus a fiddlin' in de fur-fur-away. Onyways de hengine smash her. Den Jim Orpus he took on turrible, an' when she war buried, he sot him down on de grave, an' he fiddle an' he fiddle ...
— The Book of Romance • Various
... quite contiguous. The distance of the great planet requires, it is true, hundreds of millions of miles for its expression; yet, vast as is that distance, it would have to be multiplied by tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands, before it would be long enough to span the abyss which intervenes between the earth and the nearest of ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... reflections on the old theory, recently developed before the Hellenic Society by Mr. JAY HAMBRIDGE, that certain formulae of proportions found in nature—notably in the normal ratio between a man's height and the span of his outstretched arms (2: [**square root] 5)—constituted the basis of symmetry in the art of the Greeks ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. CLVIII, January 7, 1920 • Various
... There was a span of silence. The girl looked at the bouquet, then at Aristide, who looked at the girl, then at the bouquet, then at the ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... did not; some weeks later, in a spick-and-span blue serge traveling suit, with a little bunch of pink roses fastened in her belt, she slipped away from her dreary boarding house and met her third violinist in the shabby, unromantic front parlor of an out-of-the-way parsonage; the parson's ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott
... another,—these are the mainsprings; new names, but no new qualities in the men and women. Hence the vain endeavor to keep any bit of this fairy gold, which has rolled like a brook through our hands. A thousand thoughts awoke; great rainbows seemed to span the sky; a morning among the mountains;—but we close the book, and not a ray remains in the memory of evening. But this passion for romance, and this disappointment, show how much we need real elevations ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... was known far and wide for its size and richness. Leaving his boy to work out of it a fortune for himself and his bride, the father retired to San Antonio, whither the friends and cronies of his early days were drifting. There he settled down and proceeded to finish his allotted span exactly as suited him best. The rancher's ideal of an agreeable old age comprised three important items—to wit, complete leisure, unlimited freedom of speech, and two pints of rye whisky daily. He enjoyed them all impartially, until, about a ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... I left I sold all my property there, consisting of some twenty-two lots, all in the heart of the city, for practically a song. Six of these lots were situated where now is a big planing mill. Several lots I sold to a German for a span of mules. The German is alive today and lives in Phoenix a wealthy man, simply because he had the foresight and acumen to do what I did not do—hang on to his real estate. If I had kept those twenty-two lots until ...
— Arizona's Yesterday - Being the Narrative of John H. Cady, Pioneer • John H. Cady
... unloose. Do we want wisdom? He will dwell with us as our light. Do our hearts yearn for companionship? With Him we shall never be solitary. Do we long for a bright hope which shall light up the dark future, and spread a rainbow span over the great gorge and gulf of death? Jesus Christ spans the void, and gives us unfailing and undeceiving hope. For everything that you and I need here or yonder, in heart, in will, in practical life, Jesus Christ Himself ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... Peace, focused on the Strategic Environment, Military and Security Issues, Political Development, and the Economy and Reconstruction. Every effort was made to ensure the participation of experts across a wide span of the political spectrum. Additionally, a panel of retired ...
— The Iraq Study Group Report • United States Institute for Peace
... Senility, which sets in with men when they are from sixty to eighty years old, begins after twenty to thirty months in a rat. He is then about through. But when an operation is performed on a senile rat he gets from six to eight months' new life. In other words, the addition to his normal span is 20 to 30 per cent. That would be a large fraction of life for a man to live over again. The rat lives it vigorously, eagerly, back ...
— The Goat-gland Transplantation • Sydney B. Flower
... remembered little except that he got a rest when he could plant his foot in the belt of his own harness, and again when his feet held on the rings of the belt. 'Then came a mighty effort, till I reached the stirrup formed by the rope span of the sledge, and then, mustering all the strength that remained, I reached the sledge itself and flung myself on to the snow beyond. Lashly said, "Thank God!" and it was perhaps then that I realized that his position had ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... woods, past a model dairy. Thence we went past two large farms, and out into open meadow lands, everything being kept most spick-and-span by the ...
— The Minister of Evil - The Secret History of Rasputin's Betrayal of Russia • William Le Queux
... waiting for Edith, spick, span and debonair as always (although during the war he had discarded his buttonhole). He was occupied, as he usually was in his leisure time, not in playing the piano or composing, but—in making photograph frames! ...
— Love at Second Sight • Ada Leverson
... the nearest point to the disputed ground and the best place from which to transmit information, there was a small and select British colony, mostly consisting of retired naval and military officers. A dear friend of mine amongst them was Major Russell, who had spent a lengthened span of years in the East—an admirable type of the calm, firm, courteous Anglo-Indian—who had never soured his temper and spoiled his liver with excessive "pegs," who understood and respected the natives, who had shown administrative ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... occasion I saw a whole brigade, five or six thousand men, with their first-line transport, and two Generals with implacable eyes watching them for faults. It was a fine, very picturesque display of Imperial militancy, but too marvellously spick-and-span to produce any illusion of war. So far as I was concerned, its chief use was to furnish a real conception of numbers. I calculated that if the whole British Army passed before my eyes at the same brisk rate as that solitary and splendid brigade, I should ...
— Over There • Arnold Bennett
... after fame; it was Shakespeare who felt that Fame pieced out Life's span and made us "heirs of all eternity"; it was young Shakespeare who desired fame so passionately that he believed all other men must share his immortal longing, the desire in him being a forecast of capacity, as, indeed, it usually is. If any one is ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... scarce a shathmont's length, And thick and thimber was his thigh; Between his brows there was a span, And between ...
— Ballads of Mystery and Miracle and Fyttes of Mirth - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Second Series • Frank Sidgwick
... his radical name in large letters in the History of England and of France. As a mere literary workman, his productions deserve notice. In mechanics, he invented and put up the first iron bridge of large span in England; the boldness of the attempt still excites the admiration of engineers. He may urge, too, another claim to our attention. In the legion of "most remarkable men" these United States have produced or imported, only three have achieved infamy: Arnold, Burr, and Paine. What are Paine's ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... The question, "For how long?" forced itself upon him. He, too, during the short span of youth had been a hero and a victorious knight. With secure confidence he had undertaken to establish for himself and his family a sovereignty of the world which should include the state and the Church. "More, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... not interfere. I can fix the town marshal, and as for the sheriff—he owes me for a span of mules. I have worked it all out. In the evening I'll go around to Uncle Jasper's with a bottle of old Bourbon. I'll tell him that I am celebrating my birthday or something. Once in a while he takes to the bottle, and the old liquor will tempt him. Well, when he's in good condition, I'll put him ...
— Old Ebenezer • Opie Read
... distress me; I should read your compassion every moment in your countenance, which would make me only still more unhappy. What were my thoughts amid the glorious scenery of my father-land? The hope alone of a happier future, which would have been mine but for this affliction! Oh! I could span the world were I only free from this! I feel that my youth is only now commencing. Have I not always been an infirm creature? For some time past my bodily strength has been increasing, and it is the same with my mental powers. I feel, though I cannot describe it, ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826, Volume 1 of 2 • Lady Wallace
... point was a village three miles away, where several hundred cavalry were stationed. Advancing boldly, he drove in the pickets, and coming across a span of mules hitched to a cart, he tied the rope of the howitzer to the rear, lashed the animals to a gallop and went clattering into the village to the loud shouts of ...
— Dewey and Other Naval Commanders • Edward S. Ellis
... who pride themselves upon driving their teams of oxen, but who consider that to in-span them is work only fit for Kaffirs, consider gold mining beneath them, let alone that they have not the capacity for it. They leave it to the Uitlanders: all the same, Dr. Kuyper holds it just that it is they who should take ...
— Boer Politics • Yves Guyot
... a cave-roof, all the rest of the cavern having collapsed. It is two hundred and fifteen feet above the water, and is a solid mass of rock forty feet thick, one hundred feet wide, and ninety feet in span. Thomas Jefferson owned it; George Washington scaled its side and carved his name on the rock a foot higher than any one else. Here, too, came the youth who wanted to cut his name above Washington's, and who found, to his horror, when half-way up, that he must keep ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... I ask? Whether to live a slave Is better, or to fill a soldier's grave? What life is worth drawn to its utmost span, And whether length of days brings bliss to man? Whether tyrannic force can hurt the good, Or the brave heart need quail at Fortune's mood? Whether the pure intent makes righteousness, Or virtue needs the warrant of success? All this I know: not Ammon can impart Force to the truth ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... and Marcus Aurelius; the Pantheon, lifting its spacious dome two hundred feet into the air; the mere vestibule of the Baths of Agrippa; the triumphal arches of Titus and Trajan and Constantine; the bridges which span the Tiber; the aqueducts which cross the Campagna; the Cloaca Maxima, which drained the marshes and lakes of the infant city; and, above all, the Colosseum. What glory and shame are associated with that single edifice! That alone, if nothing else remained of ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... in our life we can say only for one moment that it is; for ever after, that it was. Every evening we are poorer by a day. It might, perhaps, make us mad to see how rapidly our short span of time ebbs away; if it were not that in the furthest depths of our being we are secretly conscious of our share in the exhaustible spring of eternity, so that we can always hope to find ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Studies in Pessimism • Arthur Schopenhauer
... short, the pearl of the shell of beauty, the marrow of the spine of perfection. She had a face like the full moon, eyes of the circumference of the chief tent-pitcher's forefinger and thumb, a waist that he could span, and a form tall and majestic as the full-grown cypress. And they moreover assured me, that the Shah's anger against me would very easily cede to a ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... which had sounded all the more strange and sad to her from its contrast with the quick, cheerful, vigorous tones she had come to think the mark of him. He had spoken as though he looked forward with a poignant regret through a weary span of days, and saw himself always in youth and middle years and age coming home always to an empty room. Therefore she put her question, and Wogan was taken off ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason
... span, or through it where the crossing gullies ran, Mary Anerley rode at leisure, allowing her pony to choose his pace. That privilege he had long secured, in right of age, wisdom, and remarkable force of character. Considering his time of life, he ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... begin to think wildly. Because every man is a biped, fifty men are not a centipede. This has produced, for instance, the gaping absurdity of perpetually talking about "young nations" and "dying nations," as if a nation had a fixed and physical span of life. Thus people will say that Spain has entered a final senility; they might as well say that Spain is losing all her teeth. Or people will say that Canada should soon produce a literature; which is ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... wur wun Joe Hobb, a handloom weaver, browt his slay boards, and as he wur goin' daan th' hill he did mak sum manoevures yo mind, for talk abaat fugal men i' th' army wen thay throw thair guns up into th' air an' catches em agean, thay wur nowt ta Joe, for he span his slay boards up an' daan just like a shuttlecock. But wal this wur goin' on th' storm began to abate, and th' water seemed to get less, but still thay kept at it. Wal at last a chap at thay called Dave Twirler shaated aat at he saw summat, and thay look't way at he pointed, and thare ...
— Th' History o' Haworth Railway - fra' th' beginnin' to th' end, wi' an ackaant o' th' oppnin' serrimony • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... been consulted, it seems to me theology would have been in a vastly better state than it is now. I do not think that any woman would ever have preached the damnation of babies new-born; and "hell, paved with the skulls of infants not a span long," would be a region yet to be discovered in theology. A celibate monk—with God's curse writ on his face, which knew no child, no wife, no sister, and blushed that he had a mother—might well dream of such a thing. He had been through the preliminary studies. Consider the ghastly ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... that he had lent the Pink Pearl to King Rinkitink. But it was now too late for vain regrets, although he feared that even his great strength would avail him little against this hairy monster. For his arms were not long enough to span a fourth of the giant's huge body, while the monster's powerful limbs would be likely to crush out Inga's life before he could gain ...
— Rinkitink in Oz • L. Frank Baum
... the sea. Captain Johns was every inch a sailor. He told us midshipmen that he intended we should become sailors, and he began by sending us aloft the first calm day to black down the rigging and grease the masts. I began to go aloft with my span new uniform on. "No! no!" he said, calling me down, "the second mate will serve you out a shirt and trousers fit for that work." The mates laughed and the men laughed also. I got the shirt and trousers, and spent a couple of hours aloft, making good use of tar-brush and grease-pot, till ...
— Tales of the Sea - And of our Jack Tars • W.H.G. Kingston
... Missouri River the traders set out, twenty, thirty, forty wagons in a train—huge canvas-covered Conestogas, thirty feet in length with boxes six feet in depth, carrying three tons of freight and drawn by eight span of oxen or mules. From the lead span's noses to the end-gate of the wagon the length over all was thirty yards. These Santa Fe wagons were not prairie schooners; they ...
— Boys' Book of Frontier Fighters • Edwin L. Sabin
... change of abode did not alter his title. He was always spoken of as Ulf of Romsdal. He and his old enemy Haldor the Fierce speedily became fast friends; and so was it with their wives, Astrid and Herfrida, who also took mightily to each other. They span, and carded wool, and sewed together oftentimes, and discussed the affairs of Horlingdal, no doubt with ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne
... is very brief, so we have had to buy a span of horses and a plough, and, with the aid of other neighbours' ploughs, the corn and clover seed will soon be all sown. The ladies of several churches have met in the council-chamber, and worked at all household gear, others superintending the house ...
— God's Answers - A Record Of Miss Annie Macpherson's Work at the - Home of Industry, Spitalfields, London, and in Canada • Clara M. S. Lowe
... to whose weak sentimentality dormer- windows long appeared the supreme architectural happiness. But, for all my admiration of the houses, I find a variety that is pleasanter in the landscape, when I reach, beyond them, a little bridge which appears to span a small stream. It unites banks lined with a growth of trees and briers nodding their heads above the neighboring levels, and suggesting a quiet water-course, though in fact it is the Fitchburg Railroad that purls between them, with rippling freight and passenger ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... lashed together in the middle, and kept squarely athwartships by means of a span, afforded, after all, only the merest apology for a sea-anchor, and barely gave just sufficient drag to keep the boats stem- on to the sea without appreciably retarding their drift to leeward; but it was none the worse for this, since, with their drift scarcely retarded, they rode ...
— A Middy in Command - A Tale of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... hour, believing that the epoch of life in which they were and the fortunes of time which had been or were to come, were but turns of a wheel that still went on turning; and that whatever chanced of good or bad fortune in the one span of being, might be repaired in the next span, or the next, or the next; so, through their creed of reincarnation, taking courage to face the failure of the life they now lived. Not by logic or the teaching of any school had they ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... retracing its way westward up the valley of the Tumbling Water, and Lidgerwood was trying to go to sleep in the well-appointed little state-room which it was Tadasu Matsuwari's pride to keep spick and span and spotlessly clean. But there were disturbing thoughts, many and varied, to keep him awake, chief among them those which hung upon the dramatic midnight episode with the demented woman for its central figure. Through what dreadful Valley of Humiliation had she come to reach the abysmal ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... like fear for some moments, but had refrained from letting any of the party know. They had remarked that he was driving the spirited span to their full speed, but supposed he was hurrying because of the ...
— A Little Florida Lady • Dorothy C. Paine
... that shrewd people can bestride without such a structure. You can hire logic, in the shape of a lawyer, to prove anything that you want to prove. You can buy treatises to show that Napoleon never lived, and that no battle of Bunker-hill was ever fought. The great minds are those with a wide span, that couple truths related to, but far removed from, each other. Logicians carry the surveyor's chain over the track of which these are the true explorers. I value a man mainly for his primary relations with truth, as I understand truth,—not for any secondary ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... those we loved again, we shall love them again; and if we do not, why, there will be others to love. One of the worst limitations I feel is the fact that there are so many thousand people on earth whom I could love, if I could but meet them—and I am not going to believe that this wretched span of days is my only chance of meeting them. We need not be in a hurry—and yet we have no ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... paintwork for an hour, after which the planks were thoroughly squeegeed and dried. Then all hands went to work to polish brasswork until eight bells, by which time the ship looked as spick and span as if she had been kept under a glass case, ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood
... Presidents." In this case Latta merely takes for himself the upper right-hand corner, the other eminent persons pictured being ex-Presidents Roosevelt, McKinley and Cleveland. The star illustration, however, is a "made up" picture, in which a photograph of Latta, looking spick-and-span, has been pasted onto what is very obviously a painted picture of a hall full of people in evening dress, all of them gazing at Latta, who stands upon the stage, dignified, suave, impressive, and all dressed-up by the brush of the "re-toucher." This picture is called: "In the Auditorium at London, ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... louder and louder, and we were soon watching an interesting little duel between the forts of Termonde, under whose shelter we were creeping along, on the one side, and the Germans on the other. The latter were endeavouring to destroy one of the bridges which span the Scheldt at this point, one for the railway and one for the road; but so far they had not succeeded in hitting either. It was a week since our last visit to Termonde, and it seemed even more desolate and forsaken ...
— A Surgeon in Belgium • Henry Sessions Souttar
... humanity has grown nobler. The good of the vast human whole is now acknowledged as the end of all social union. Humanity embodies love; the object of our activity; the source of what we have; the ruler of the life under whose span we work, and ...
— The Jericho Road • W. Bion Adkins
... Where the divers of Bathos lie drowned in a heap, And Southey's last Pan has pillowed his sleep; That Felo de se who, half drunk with his Malmsey, Walked out of his depth and was lost in a calm sea, 10 Singing "Glory to God" in a spick and span stanza, The like (since Tom Sternhold was choked) never ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron
... of stone, or a Habbey, much out of repair, A skelinton Banquetting 'All, and a bit of a broken-down stair, May appear most perticular "precious" to them as the picteresk cops; But give me the sububs and stucco, smart villas, and spick-and-span shops. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 15, 1892 • Various
... up the wall they crept, looking like human flies on the ceiling, and clinging as close, never resting, reaching one recess only to set out for the next; nearer and nearer in the race for life, until but a single span separated the foremost from the boy. And now the iron hook fell at his feet, and the fireman stood upon the step with the rescued lad in his arms, just as the pent-up flames burst lurid from the attic window, reaching with impotent fury for their ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education
... afternoon in lying stirless on the turf, at the foot of some tree of friendly umbrage: no society did she need but that of Caroline, and it sufficed if she were within call; no spectacle did she ask but that of the deep blue sky, and such cloudlets as sailed afar and aloft across its span; no sound but that of the bee's ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... the poor bride, mud-spattered, wet, and very far from being the spick and span young woman that fashionable society knew ...
— The Flyers • George Barr McCutcheon
... again, with some new and harrowing accompaniments, in which woman's rights and demands were prominent. Then, on the fifth, they rested from their labors in the clean, soap- charged atmosphere—walking gingerly over spick and span carpets, laying each book and paper demurely in place, and gazing, at a proper distance, through diamond-bright windows; and on the sixth the ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... in the house this time. There was Gregson—now spick and span in his maroon livery—haughtily mounting guard over the open doorway while a belated scrubwoman was cleaning the ...
— The Girl from Sunset Ranch - Alone in a Great City • Amy Bell Marlowe
... clean apparition in blue without either waterproof or umbrella. I refer to Jane. She suddenly appeared, as I was passing The Ladies' Tea Association Rooms, walking in front of me. She looked just the same as when I last saw her—spick and span, and—dry. I repeat the word—dry—for that is what attracted my attention most. Despite the deluge, not a single raindrop touched her—the plumes on her toque were splendidly erect and curly, her shoe-buckles sparkled, ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... away from the Preston farm with the passengers going to Canada by the U.G. Railway The next morning I began the task of fitting yokes to my two span of heifers, and that afternoon, I gave Lily and Cherry their first lesson. I had had some experience in driving cattle on Mrs. Fogg's farm in Herkimer County, but I should have made a botch job of it if it had not been for Mr. Preston, ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... brevity of the individual span, seeing that the generations, the centuries, and the worlds themselves are but occupied forever with the ceaseless reproduction of the hymn of life, in all the hundred thousand modes and variations which make ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... in remembrances of you. Fanny expends herself in phrases that can only be justified by her romantic nature. Mary reserves a portion of your silk, not to be buried in (as the false nuncio asserts), but to make up spick and span into a bran-new gown to wear when you come. I am the same as when you knew me, almost to a surfeiting identity. This very night I am going to leave off tobacco! Surely there must be some other world in which this unconquerable purpose shall ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... may well be that they loved, and that they were blessed in their love for the little space allotted them in each other's company. The sequel justifies in a measure the assumption. Just one little summer out of the span of their lives—brief though those lives were—did they spend together, and it is good to find some little evidence that, during that brief season at least, they inhabited ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... and hear his matchless voice, and receive the lessons of his unrivaled experience— we might, perhaps, grieve to-day as those who have no hope. But that is not the case. He had long exceeded the span of mortal life; and his latter months had been months of unspeakable pain and distress. He is now in that rest for which he sought and prayed, and which was to give him relief from an existence ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... were lowing. They were waiting impatiently. But how they would stare when they saw her in her beautiful, new, red dress, with its many pleats, which she had got on purpose to do the thing in grand style with Jendrek, and her spick-and-span new shoes, in which she had danced last ...
— Absolution • Clara Viebig
... span the interval from the first admission of popular influence, under Solon, to the downfall of the State. Their history furnishes the classic example of the peril of Democracy under conditions singularly favourable. ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... yearned-for bauble of feeble souls—immortality. But he knows, HE knows, standing upright on his two legs unswaying. He is compounded of meat and wine and sparkle, of sun-mote and world-dust, a frail mechanism made to run for a span, to be tinkered at by doctors of divinity and doctors of physic, and to be flung into the ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... a day or an hour will bring forth. For many years one may be permitted to move on "the even tenor of his way," without anything of momentous import occurring to mark the passage of his little span of time as it sweeps him onward to eternity. At another period of life, events, it may be of the most startling and abidingly impressive nature, are crowded into a few months or weeks, or even days. So it was now with our travellers on the African ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne
... town to a board stable, and took her through to a large, roofed inclosure in the rear. There he led to her a span of sturdy dappled chestnuts, with cream-colored ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... else here that I care to do, and I never leave the house except to take a little walk with Oliver on Sunday afternoon. Mrs. Midden says that I make a mistake to give a spring cleaning every day, but I love to keep the house looking perfectly spick and span, and I make hot bread twice a day, because Oliver is so fond of it. He is just as sweet and dear as he can be and wants to help about everything, but I hate to see him doing housework. Somehow it doesn't seem to me to look manly. We have had our first quarrel about who is to get up ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow |
