"Speck" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the evil men in New York cannot harm a hair of my head, were it not the will of God. If it be His will, what right have I or any one to say aught? I am only a speck, a mite, before God, yet not a hair of my head can be harmed unless it be His will. Oh, to live, to feel, to be—Thy will be done!" (pp. 84-5). Again: "I prayed that, if my bill might not pass, I might go back to New York submissive to God's will, feeling that it was for the best. I asked for forgiveness ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... would have been unworthy of notice had they not resembled the small cloudy speck, which, though scarcely visible in the distant horizon, approaches, and swells, and bursts over the head in a storm. The beginning contest between the Earl and the Mowbray family, the interest which the worthy Mr. Glibly had thought proper to take in ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... mind was illumined by the torch-light of science, it came to understand that the Earth was but one of a myriad of stars floating in infinite space, a mere speck of dust. ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 1, March 1906 • Various
... have an enjoyment which the ardent lover of nature alone can appreciate. Far as the eye can look, there is uninterrupted harmony. Splendid plains covered with the fleecy tribe, and here and there (alas! only but here and there) a speck of water, enough to vindicate nature from the charge of utter neglect—and no more. A glance thrown in another direction brings to your view an endless tract of country deprived even of these solitary specks, where the grass grows as high as your knee, and where ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... find the soap-grease, if there is any. As to the rest, I don't want to see nothin' o' him in the kitchen so I'll relieve him if he don't want to see much o' me in the parlour.—I shouldn't wonder if there wa'n't a speck of ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... in looking for a speck of dust on the mantelpiece, not for its own intrinsic value, but for the sake of Mary's future. She had apparently no observation of value to offer upon the vexed subject of ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... deed has been like a broken vase, whose perfume has exhaled for two thousand years, and shall go on diffusing sweetness to the end of time. Last of all, after the rich men of Alexandria had cast their rattling gold into the brazen treasury, a poor widow cast a speck of dust called two mites, and, lo! this humble ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... community, subject to recognised law, and we might take them for the mildest and most amusing of all birds; but wait, and we shall see something fit to make us think. Far off on the clear gray sky appears a wavering speck which rises and falls and sways from side to side in an extraordinary way. Nearer and nearer the speck comes, until at last we find ourselves standing under a rook which flies with great difficulty. The poor rascal looks most disreputable, for his tail has evidently been shot away, and he ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... Bridge, and transfer there to another taking him direct to the course. At the Bridge he was thrust into a motley crowd, eager, expectant, full of joyous anticipation of assured good luck. He was but a tiny unit of this many-voiced throng; he drifted a speck on the bosom of the flood that poured into the waiting race train. He was tossed into a seat by the swirling tide, and as the train moved he looked at his fellow-passengers. There was a pleasant air of opulence all about him. Gold chains of fair prominence, diamonds of lustrous hue, ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... the ground to a distance above it of from ten to twelve feet. Huge rocks would be covered six or eight inches deep with them. Occasionally they would light upon a tree, and in a few moments the tree or bush would be absolutely covered, every speck of foliage hidden. It was difficult to breathe without inhaling them, and we were kept busy brushing them from our faces and clothes. They were all traveling in one direction—down stream. I believe that they had been into the canyons laying their ...
— Out of Doors—California and Oregon • J. A. Graves
... vaporous mist obscured the horizon and floated in tangled wreaths upon the face of the sea. Only that line of sand seemed still clear-cut and distinct, and as she glanced along it her eyes were held by something approaching, something which seemed at first nothing but a black, moving speck, then gradually resolved itself into the semblance of a man on horseback, galloping furiously. She watched him as he drew nearer and nearer, the sand flying from his horse's hoofs, his figure motionless, his eyes apparently fixed upon some distant spot. It was not until ...
— The Zeppelin's Passenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... one to another as mutual customers, and our commercial relations will grow more fruitful to both sides from year to year, and from day to day, as we remain true to the good old maxim: "Live and let live." [Cheers.] Nor is there the least speck of danger in the horizon threatening to disturb the friendliness of an international understanding between the Old World and the New. That cordial international understanding rests upon a very simple, natural, ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... extraordinarily gratifying to Soames to have left him five thousand pounds of Timothy's money. They sat down together in the little drawing-room, whose walls—like a vision of heaven—were sky-blue and gold with every picture-frame unnaturally bright, and every speck of dust removed from every piece of furniture, to read that little masterpiece—the Will of Timothy. With his back to the light in Aunt Hester's chair, Soames faced Gradman with his face to the light, on Aunt Ann's sofa; and, crossing ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... they are necessary evils sometimes, so we must ask our reader's forgiveness, and beg him, or her, to remember that we are still at the commencement of our story, standing at the end of the pier, and watching the departure of the Pole Star whale-ship, which is now a scarcely distinguishable speck on the horizon. ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... reputation for neatness and order was as well established as her reputation for grumbling. There were no evidences of a refined taste about the place; but perfect order prevailed. There was not a weed in the garden without, nor a speck in the house within. Every article made of wood was as white as soap and sand or as bright as turpentine and wax and much rubbing could make it; and every piece of metal ...
— The Orphans of Glen Elder • Margaret Murray Robertson
... "Reverend Abraham, can you see well afar off?" and when I answered that I once could see very well, but that the many tears I had shed had now peradventure dimmed my eyes, he pointed to the Streckelberg, and said, "Do you then see nothing there?" Ego. "Naught save a black speck, which I cannot make out." Ille. "Know then that that is the pile whereon your daughter is to burn at ten o'clock to-morrow morning, and which the constables are now raising." When this hell-hound had thus spoken, I gave a loud cry and swounded. O blessed Lord! I know not how I lived ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... speck was seen in the horizon; now it is visible above the hollow wave, now curtained from our sight by the swelling billow: we approach nearer; the speck divides, and two spots appear; they ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... you ask?" "You will want one soon," said he; "do you observe the ears of all the horses?" "Yes, and was just about to ask the reason." "They see the storm-breeder, and we shall see him soon." At this moment there was not a cloud visible in the firmament. Soon after a small speck appeared in the road. "There," said my companion, "comes the storm-breeder; he always leaves a Scotch mist behind him. By many a wet jacket do I remember him. I suppose the poor fellow suffers much himself, much more than is known to the world." Presently ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... resolved to take all possible precautions against being surprised by the Indians. On Cuttyhunk there was a large pond, and in the pond there was an islet; and Gosnold, with his score of followers, fixed upon this speck of rocky earth as the most suitable spot in the western hemisphere wherein to plant the roots of English civilization. They built a hut and made a boat, and gathered together their stores of furs and sassafras; but these same stores proved their undoing. ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... that there must be some connection between this unprecedentedly heavy speck of material and that lighter-than-air gem of mystery. For the time being we were careful to keep the two apart. As for the unexplained footsteps, they were still slightly audible, as the invisible creatures ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... he slipped a tiny billet-doux into the hand of the departing girl, who half heeding the action, dropped it into her pocket, and sat down in loneliness upon the deck, to watch the slowly vanishing shore. Fainter and dimmer grew the speck upon the deep to the friends who watched on shore, fainter and dimmer in the gathering twilight, till the bark rounded old Defiance, and was divided by distance and darkness from ...
— Leah Mordecai • Mrs. Belle Kendrick Abbott
... was deserted. Since the disappearance of the jubarte, not a speck came to alter the surface. All was sky and water around the "Pilgrim." The young novice knew only too well that he was beyond the routes followed by the ships of commerce, and that the other whalers were cruising still farther ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne
... who had been using a small but powerful telescope, uttered an exclamation, and focussed the instrument on a speck that seemed moving along ...
— Tom Swift Among The Diamond Makers - or The Secret of Phantom Mountain • Victor Appleton
... nut brown musk, e'er claims the highest price * Whilst for a load of whitest lime none more than dirham bids? And while white speck upon the eye deforms the loveliest youth, * Black eyes discharge the sharpest shafts in lashes from ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... at, for Nature is not bounded by the laws of human reason, which aims only at man's true benefit and preservation. Her limits are infinitely wider, and have reference to the eternal order of Nature, wherein man is but a speck. It is by the necessity of this alone that all individuals are conditioned for living and acting in a particular way. If anything, therefore, in Nature seems to us ridiculous, absurd, or evil, it is because we only know in part, and are almost entirely ignorant of the order ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza
... says Jacka, "for I was just about stepping down to call you. See that lugger, yonder?" He jerked his thumb over his shoulder at a speck in the grey from which the Van der Werf was now running at something ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... embarrassments. It was a matter of comparatively slight moment that, while the old structure was falling to pieces, they were with the most painstaking gravity watching over every old ornamental scroll and every speck of rust in the constitution; after all it was simply ridiculous, when the genteel lords had scruples of conscience as to calling their deliberative assembly beyond the sacred soil of the city the senate, and cautiously ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... 1737, a good annular eclipse was observed at Edinburgh by Maclaurin.[102] In his account he says:—"A little before the annulus was complete a remarkable point or speck of pale light appeared near the middle of the part of the Moon's circumference that was not yet come upon the disc of the Sun.... During the appearance of the annulus the direct light of the Sun was still very considerable, but ...
— The Story of Eclipses • George Chambers
... city seemed a speck of light below, There 'twixt heaven and earth suspended as the bell swung to and fro; And the sexton at the bell-rope, old and deaf, heard not the bell, Sadly thought, "That twilight curfew rang young ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various
... late Mayor. Was it found on his dead body, or on his desk, or anywhere, after the murder? No? Not after the most careful and thorough search? Completely disappeared? Very good. Now let us have Louisa Speck." ...
— In the Mayor's Parlour • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... there is less rain and wind at Nice, than in any other part of the world that I know; and such is the serenity of the air, that you see nothing above your head for several months together, but a charming blue expanse, without cloud or speck. Whatever clouds may be formed by evaporation of the sea, they seldom or never hover over this small territory; but, in all probability, are attracted by the mountains that surround it, and there fall in rain or snow: as for those ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... Before eight o'clock old Punk had the camp to himself, Cathcart and Hank were far along the trail that led westwards, while the canoe that carried Defago and Simpson, with silk tent and grub for two days, was already a dark speck bobbing on the bosom of the lake, going ...
— The Wendigo • Algernon Blackwood
... boughs.' The monotonous swells of the sand-heaps, the weary expanse stretching right away to the horizon, no land-marks but the bleaching bones of former victims, the gigantic sameness, the useless light streaming down, and in the centre one tiny, black speck toiling vainly, rushing madly hither and thither—a lost man—till he desperately flings himself down and lets death bury him, that is the one picture suggested by the text. The other is of that same wilderness, but ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... earth, but as a demon of the air shalt thou dwell in misery till the end of time.' And of a sudden from out her shoulders grew black, shadowy wings, and, with a piercing scream, she swirled upward, until the awe-stricken Dedannans saw nought save a black speck vanish among the lowering clouds. And as a demon of the air do Eva's black wings swirl her ...
— Celtic Tales - Told to the Children • Louey Chisholm
... know. I suppose Gordon will say that I ought to be too proud to point that out; but what are you to do when no one has any imagination? You have a grain or two, Mr. Longueville; but Captain Lovelock has n't a speck. As for Gordon, je n'en parle pas! But even you, Mr. Longueville, would never imagine that I am an interesting invalid—that we are travelling for my delicate health. The doctors have n't given me up, but I have given them up. ...
— Confidence • Henry James
... known as man; you microscopical mixture of protoplasm and egotism; you atomical speck of ignorance and avarice; you who believe that the earth, moon, stars and all creation was manufactured for your special benefit; if you could only be shown your actual size in the universe as I was on that occasion, I think it would result in the eradication of some of your innate ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson
... paced his deck, And peered through darkness. Ah, that night. Of all dark nights! And then a speck— A light! A light! At last a light! It grew, a starlit flag unfurled! It grew to be Time's burst of dawn. He gained a world; he gave that world Its grandest ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... Amadan went, and had a hearty supper and a soft bed; and in the morning she called him up early, and she gave him directions where to meet the cat and how to find it, and she told him there was only one vital spot on that cat, and it was a black speck on the bottom of the cat's stomach, and unless he could happen to run his sword right through this, the cat would surely kill ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... Vere took the glasses and peered long and anxiously through them at a small speck which Ned pointed out as it rose and fell on ...
— The Motor Boys on the Pacific • Clarence Young
... her hand to the familiar figure now only faintly discernible on the fast receding steamship, and she stood there long after every one else had left the dock watching until the Mauretania was only a speck ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... no hand but his can raise the chains that support it; for he only knows the secret of their machinery. He has left the place for the night. He lives three miles and a half away, at a little village yonder, which looks only a black speck in the distance, and he will not return ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... stretched and every eye strained. Away across the endless dead level of the prairie a black speck appears against the sky. In a second or two it becomes a horse and rider, rising and falling, rising and falling sweeping towards us nearer and nearer—growing more and more distinct, more and more sharply defined—nearer and still nearer, and the flutter ...
— Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest • J. Frank Dobie
... his hair was still wet on his forehead. Just across a conical hill rose into the golden air, the highest hill in all the countryside, but here but a little thing, for the loch was as high as many a hill-top. Just on its face was a scaur, and there a raven—a speck—was wheeling slowly. Among the little islands broods of mallard were swimming, and trout in a bay were splashing with wide circles. The whole place had seemed caught up into an ecstasy, a riot of gold and crimson and far-off haunting shades and scents and voices. And yet it was no ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... branch, a caterpillar has been crushed by the fugitive's great foot, and Tarzan knows instinctively where that same foot would touch in the next stride. Here he looks to find a tiny particle of the demolished larva, ofttimes not more than a speck of moisture. ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... was scarcely calculated to interest a world the greater portion of whose inhabitants were unaware of the existence of the planet Neptune, nor outside the astronomical profession did the subsequent discovery of a faint remote speck of light in the region of the perturbed planet cause any very great excitement. Scientific people, however, found the intelligence remarkable enough, even before it became known that the new body was rapidly growing larger and brighter, ...
— The Door in the Wall And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... beheld about a dozen bandits on either side of the road, with arms uplifted, and holding deadly weapons, as if ready and determined to strike with well-aimed precision. But, strange to say, they all remained as motionless as statues, until we had gone on so far as to leave them a mere speck on the descending horizon. ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... I des come by myse'f. I laid off fer ter tell Mars. George, but I year talk he mighty headstrong, en I speck he des laugh ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris
... I loved you so little as to be biased against our marriage because of money troubles. Pooh!" she flicked away a speck of dust from his coat, "I don't care that for ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... but small. But the chase and capture of one of the swift Clyde-built steamers was a different matter. Perhaps a lookout in the maintop of a cruiser, steaming idly about the Atlantic, between Nassau and Wilmington, would spy, far off on the horizon, a black speck, moving swiftly along the ocean. No curling smoke would tell of the blockade-runner's presence, and nothing could be seen until the hull of the steamer itself was perceptible. With the quick hail of the lookout, ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... it between the lid and ball of Oscar's inflamed eye. After it had remained there a few minutes, he allowed it to drop into his hand, and on a close-examination, he found that it had brought with it the offending substance that had caused him so much pain. It was a little black speck, so small that it was barely perceptible to the unaided eye. It now being quite late, Mrs. Preston thought that further inquiries and answers concerning Oscar's visit had better be deferred till morning, and the family soon ...
— Oscar - The Boy Who Had His Own Way • Walter Aimwell
... craft cast strange lights and shadows on the black waters, added to which the shimmering reflection of the white-ribbed walls had a very singular effect. But the sensation was still more weird when we saw other mystic forms appearing from out the black darkness; first a mere speck of red light was visible, till nearing us we beheld other boats freighted with grim-looking figures that glided past into the further darkness. These phantom-like forms, steering their rafts through ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... smooth horns Are clear against that disk? O great Diana! I, I have praised thee, yet I do not know What moves my mind so strangely, save that once I lay all night upon a thymy hill, And watched the slow clouds pass like heaped-up foam Across blue marble, till at last no speck Blotted the clear expanse, and the full moon Rose in much light, and all night long I saw Her ordered progress, till, in midmost heaven, There came a terrible silence, and the mice Crept to their holes, the crickets did not chirp, All ...
— Young Adventure - A Book of Poems • Stephen Vincent Benet
... them up that dot, that speck of land— It goes not from your portion. If you win The game, what matters it to you ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... flotilla that accompanied us during the last two days was made up mostly of American and British destroyers, though there were two French boats among them. They made a lively scene, and surely gave us great protection. If a speck would appear on the horizon, two boats would be off to investigate it, and would return later to join the fleet. We were also accompanied on the last day of the voyage by two airplanes as a further protection ...
— In the Flash Ranging Service - Observations of an American Soldier During His Service - With the A.E.F. in France • Edward Alva Trueblood
... merely from habit; for the expression remained unchanged on her melancholy face. At length the gray eyes dropped to the water and fixed their gaze upon a fishing boat turning toward the shore. A few moments before it had been but a black speck near the lighthouse; but as it came nearer Flea distinctly saw the two men and the boy in it. Upon the bow of the boat was perched Snatchet, a yellow terrier, his short ears perked up with happiness at the prospect of supper. When the craft touched ...
— From the Valley of the Missing • Grace Miller White
... continued blowing furiously, and the stranger did not re-appear. Again they were on the look-out. At daybreak she was not to be seen; the wind, however, had abated. As the day drew on, Peter, who was on the look-out, caught sight of a small speck in the south-east; ...
— The History of Little Peter, the Ship Boy • W.H.G. Kingston
... mental wants, talking and reading are out of the question, except it be to scold your servants, and to con over a Sydney newspaper, which contains little else but the miserable party politics of this speck upon the globe, reports of crime and punishment, and low-lived slang and flash, such as fill the pothouse Sunday ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 401, November 28, 1829 • Various
... with the former. It was scarcely credible that a man should be so regardless of his own family, but the echo of the mystic, sublime discourses of the Greek porches, the faint but sacred trace of the march of vast armies, and the fall of nations, caused Leslie to dwindle into a mere speck in the creation. Of course she would be provided for somehow: marry, or make her own livelihood. Socrates did not plague himself much about the fate of Xantippe: Seneca wrote from his exile to console his mother, but the epistles were for the benefit ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... admitted as accurate, and I see no just reason for supposing the contrary, they are more than sufficient to meet the expences of so apparently an enormous establishment. If, however, the King of Prussia, the Monarch of a small indistinguishable speck on the globe, when put in comparison with the empire of China, can keep up an army of one hundred and eighty or two hundred thousand men, I can perceive nothing either extravagant or extraordinary in supposing that a Sovereign whose dominions are eight times the extent of those ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... those which we experience 'when we see, or hear, or feel, or love, or hate, or will, or desire,' would suffice for his entire refutation, he found such an idea produced. He knew too well also to what enormous errors of thought minute errors of expression may lead, to disregard any speck of inaccuracy in any one of his definitions. The apparently slight oversight committed by him on this occasion will, indeed, be presently seen to have sensibly contributed to lead him subsequently into a mistake of ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... see that tiny speck of light in the side towards the picture? Well, the view is thrown from this box on the wall, and it is the motion of the powerful light that gives apparent life to the angel. It ...
— The Land of the Changing Sun • William N. Harben
... I watched a tremulous fading rose Rise on the wind to court a butterfly. "One speck of pollen, ere my petals close, Bring me one touch of love ...
— Last Poems • Laurence Hope
... stared wistfully after me (oh, Roger, you'll never forget, never, I know! Twenty-five years are over and gone to-night, and the close, unrivalled companionship of them, and I am alone from now on—but you'll not forget!) and then they turned to each other and I was no more than a speck on the evening water. "Put your back into it, man; get along, can't you?" I growled to Caliban. We shot ahead and left them to each other, alone under the heavy, yellow moon and the ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... that several of his kindred and family were subject to the like gradual decay, and lost all use of their eyes, as he did, in their declining years. Athanis the historian tells us, that even during the war against Hippo and Mamercus, while he was in his camp at Mylae, there appeared a white speck within his eye, from whence all could foresee the deprivation that was coming on him; this, however, did not hinder him then from continuing the siege, and prosecuting the war, till he got both the tyrants into ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... idea!" Ellen Robinson gasped to the autumn landscape as she stood alone and watched the car, a mere speck down the road, on its way to town. "The idea!" And then as if for self-justification: "Poor mother! What would she think if she could know? Well, I wash my ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... Kaan keeps an immense stud of white horses and mares; in fact more than 10,000 of them, and all pure white without a speck. The milk of these mares is drunk by himself and his family, and by none else, except by those of one great tribe that have also the privilege of drinking it. This privilege was granted them by Chinghis Kaan, on account ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... balm, and the skies ever fair; The clouds of his young life have all passed away And he enjoys the full light of an endless day— For all who find footing on that peaceful shore, Shall hunger, and thirst, and sorrow no more. But once more we return to this "dim speck of earth," And revisit the clime that gave Edward his birth. Bloody Mary his sister, next mounted the throne, But when five years had pass'd, was obliged to lay down, Notwithstanding reluctance, her Sceptre and Crown. For death to whom she had sent many a one, Now called ...
— The Kings and Queens of England with Other Poems • Mary Ann H. T. Bigelow
... with no visible sign of their existence except the square, black hole of the doorway. Out in the open a man sits with a pair of field-glasses, sweeping the sky. He is the aeroplane look-out, and at the first sign of a distant speck in the sky or the drone of an engine he blows shrilly on his whistle; every man dives to earth or under cover, and remains motionless until the whistle signals all clear again. An enemy aeroplane might drop to within pistol ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable
... never been to but two or three real dancing-parties in my life. Why, I've only just outgrown children's parties. I may get tired of it all, after two or three seasons, but as yet it's such a novelty to me that I enjoy every speck of it." ...
— Patty's Summer Days • Carolyn Wells
... answer her, and little to interrupt her speculations. About the middle of the forenoon, or later, she encountered a fellow-traveler in the person of a cowboy on a bay pony. At first a mere speck in the distance, he grew steadily on her vision, and then went riding past, life-size and lifting his sombrero; which salute she acknowledged pleasantly, smiling and inclining her head. A very strong fellow, she thought, whoever he might be. A while later, as she was jogging ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart
... boat was eagerly watched as she glided rapidly over the smooth water. At last her white speck of canvas disappeared beneath the horizon, ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston
... rocks will have again closed over the chasm not to be re-opened by me, nor perhaps by others, for ages yet unguessed. Think of me sometimes, and with kindness. When I reach the life that lies beyond this speck in time, I shall look round for thee. Even there, the world consigned to thyself and thy people may have rocks and gulfs which divide it from that in which I rejoin those of my race that have gone before, and I may be powerless ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... the farther sight was the ruddy, scintillating speck, apparently at the end of the stick itself, so accurately had ...
— Stories by English Authors: Africa • Various
... sure he didn't take his shoes with, him." Hazard rolled over on his back and lazily regarded the speck of flag fluttering briskly on the sheer edge of the precipice. "Say!" He sat up with a ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London
... my realm—I refer to Bad-Temper and Blunder, Two brutish and boobyish Titans—they've wholly corrupted our morals, And taught us "Boycotting," and "Strikes," and "Lock-outs," and all sorts of mad quarrels. I hope you don't know them down there, in your queer little speck of a ...
— Punch Among the Planets • Various
... and put his hand over the rose on her heart, that had ceased to beat. Suddenly it seemed to him that his hand had been stung, and he drew it away quickly, his eyes on the golden rose. And where she had left it just incomplete at his coming, he saw a jet-black speck. A light broke over him swiftly, and one by one he broke the strands at the rose's heart, and under it revealed a small black snake; and as the rose had been done from her own gold locks, so the snake had been done from the one black ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
... Venning, and the boy noticed that the pupils of the eyes had a white speck, which gave ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... loved hearts clung around thee on the deck, Welling with sunny hopes 'neath sunny skies; The wide horizon round thee had no speck; E'en Doubt herself could see no ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. I, No. 6 - Of Literature, Art, And Science, New York, August 5, 1850 • Various
... Hence the lake stretched northward, like some broad river, trenched between mountain ranges still leafless and gray. Then they looked down on Ticonderoga, with the flag of the Bourbons, like a flickering white speck, waving on its ramparts; and next on Crown Point with its tower of stone. Lake Champlain now spread before them, widening as they flew: on the left, the mountain wilderness of the Adirondacks, like ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... the eastward-setting wind, Nissr felt nothing of such trivialities. Twice or thrice, gaps in the cloud-veil let dim ocean appear to the watchers in the glass observation pits; and once they spied a laboring speck on the waters—a great passenger-liner, worrying toward New York in heavy weather. The doings of such, and of the world below, seemed trivial to the Legionaries as follies of ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... after a good deal of handshaking, and Taffy looked after them wistfully as they turned to wave their caps and trudged away over the rise towards the cross-roads. Away to the left in the wintry sunshine a speck of scarlet caught his eye against the blue-grey of the towans. He watched it as it came slowly towards him, and his heart leapt—yet not quite as he ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... to mind that the company assembled numbered about fifty, the room being big enough to hold three hundred. I have a vision still before me, of twenty out of these fifty guests, solemnly executing intricate figure-dances, under the superintendence of an infirm local dancing-master—a mere speck of fidgety human wretchedness twisting about in the middle of an empty floor. I see, faintly, down the dim vista of the Past, an agreeable figure, like myself, with a cocked hat under its arm, black tights ...
— A Rogue's Life • Wilkie Collins
... a speck of red through the crack," he confessed after a minute, as if he were unburdening his ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... one side in night and the other in dim twilight from the little speck of a sun three and a half billion miles away, jagged mountains rising out of the snow that covered it from pole to pole. The snow on top would be frozen CO2; according to the thermocouples, the surface temperature was well below minus-100 Centigrade. ...
— Space Viking • Henry Beam Piper
... business at an end, the prodigal son come home. A very bright planet shone before him and drew a trenchant wake along the water. He took that for his line and followed it. That was the last earthly thing that he should look upon; that radiant speck, which he had soon magnified into a City of Laputa, along whose terraces there walked men and women of awful and benignant features, who viewed him with distant commiseration. These imaginary spectators consoled him; he told ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... danger, and that Aunt Jane might wait if she liked till the last boat, as it would take several trips to transfer us and our baggage. I supposed of course that this would include me, and stood leaning on the rail, watching the first boat with Mr. Shaw, Captain Magnus and the cook, fade to a dark speck on the water, when Mr. ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... canvas became one leaning sail, and then a speck, and then nothing. There was an afterglow on the water which turned it to a wavering pavement of yellow-pink sheen. In that clear, high atmosphere, mainland shores and islands seemed to throw out the evening purples from themselves, and thus to slowly reach for one another ...
— The Chase Of Saint-Castin And Other Stories Of The French In The New World • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... sent up with the rest into the sugar-bush, where we will rendezvous about one o'clock, and in the afternoon help 'sugar off.' See the sunlight on the barns yonder; how warm it looks! Look off on that hill-side, where the snow lies so deep! How like a speck of gold it shimmers to the eye! and there goes Dancer on the crust, as if he enjoyed the freshness of the air, and the warm sunlight. Let us try the crust too, and if it will bear us, we shall save time by going across lots. Here we go, with our heels crunching the glittering pavement, leaving scarcely ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... the great avenue, and paused at the bend to see for the first time at close quarters the house, which from the valley below had seemed little more than a speck of white set in a deep bower of green. Seen at close quarters its size amazed him. With its cluster of outbuildings, it occupied nearly the whole of the plateau, which was like a jutting tableland out from the side of the mountain. It was of two stories only, and encircled with a great veranda supported ...
— The Avenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... simple speck of protoplasm void of visible organization—a mere jelly to hold the invisible life power—carries within itself in that invisible spiritual element the destiny of myriads of animal beings, and according to the nature of that invisible spiritual element it ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, May 1887 - Volume 1, Number 4 • Various
... hour up, Hal sent the airship lower and lower. Soon, a faint gray speck below became visible, assuming larger and larger proportions, until all aboard made out the ...
— The Boy Allies in the Balkan Campaign - The Struggle to Save a Nation • Clair W. Hayes
... happy wonder, the swelling film of soapy water into whose iridescent globe he has blown the speck from the bowl of the pipe. But this amazing development around us is not of airy and vanishing films. It is solidly constructed, in marble and brick, in stone and iron, while the proportions to which it has swelled surpass ...
— Opening Ceremonies of the New York and Brooklyn Bridge, May 24, 1883 • William C. Kingsley
... gold-braided shako whose black front was decked with the embroidered cross cannon of the regiment, surmounted by the arms of the United States. This he noiselessly placed upon the edge of the mantel, stepped back to complacently view his work, flicked off a possible speck of dust on the sleeve of the coat, touched with a chamois-skin the gold crescent of the nearest epaulette, then softly, noiselessly as before vanished through the door-way, tiptoed to the adjoining window, and peeked in. Mr. Doyle had thrown himself into Pierce's ...
— Waring's Peril • Charles King
... moment, watching with fascinated eyes the speck of scarlet that still trembled in the sunshine. It fluttered from sight at last, and ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... disquieting. It was a noiseless, odorless, rubber-tired battle. So far as we were concerned it consisted of rings of shrapnel smoke floating over a mountain pass many miles distant. So many miles distant that when, with a glass, you could see a speck of fire twinkle in the sun like a heliograph, you could not tell whether it was the flash from the gun or the flame from the shell. Neither could you tell whether the cigarette rings issued from the lips of the Japanese guns or from those of the Russians. The only thing about that ...
— Notes of a War Correspondent • Richard Harding Davis
... bonfire possesses an extraordinary fascination for the stranger. Some times the lurid glare is continuous; at other times there are long intervals of waiting, and even then the reflected light is very faint, a mere speck of reddish glow in the surrounding blackness, gone in the twinkling of an eye. But, strangely enough, one grows to understand the Mountain better from a distance and by watching its moods from afar, like ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... vision of a pale, determined face, a blond head bared to the chill wind. She heeded not their challenge; it was a question whether or not she heard it. They stood watching her until she and her horse dwindled into a mere moving speck, finally to become lost altogether in a crook ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... much about her 'nightly blue sirreup,'" said he to his mother, "that I thought I would tease her a little speck." ...
— Dotty Dimple at Play • Sophie May
... spirit—whether of earth or not, I cannot tell, but as I think more than half divine—who will drive him back shattered and bleeding, the jest and ridicule of the observing world. She who, by the force of pure intellect, has out of this speck in the desert made a large empire, who has humbled Persia, and entered her capital in triumph, has defeated three Roman armies, and wrested more provinces than time will allow me to number, from the firm grasp of the self-styled mistress of the world, this more than Semiramis is to be daunted forsooth, ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... to answer us, from far to the south, over mid-Jersey, came a new manifestation. We saw a speck rising, a distant mounting speck of something dark, with streamers of tiny ...
— Wandl the Invader • Raymond King Cummings
... We would walk for hours together, walk in complete silence and understanding. My strength seemed to be returning more day by day. We went far afield in search of material for her thesis. She would track down the most minute speck ...
— Each Man Kills • Victoria Glad
... before us, what right have we to imitate what our eye cannot see, understand, or follow? By what standard are we to judge her, if we look away from the passing hour? For instance, considering only the imperceptible speck that we form in the worlds, and disregarding the immensity that surrounds us, we are wholly ignorant of all that concerns our possible life beyond the tomb; and we forget that, in the present state of our knowledge, nothing authorises us to affirm that ...
— The Buried Temple • Maurice Maeterlinck
... Far ahead, a tiny speck in the distance, I made out another flier late in the afternoon. It could be none other than that which bore my lost love and ...
— Warlord of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... were in Geneva, you know, and we used to call him 'our mountain boy,' saying that he had brought a speck of the mountain skies away in ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... "Yonder whitish speck is Hawkesmore Crag in Scotland," she said, "the distance is hardly eighteen miles, as the crow flies. Your horse will carry you there in two hours—and I will lend you my mare if you think her ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... Bob, when the notary had departed, "we should show some consideration for all this money. I have here the papers showing I have filed on twenty acres of a mining claim. It's just twenty acres of the Mojave desert, near San Pasqual, and I do not know that it contains a speck of valuable mineral, but that is neither here nor there. I staked it as a mining claim and ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... spot, n. speck, speckle, mark, blot, discoloration, fleck, dapple, blotch, smutch; stain, reproach, blemish, flaw; place, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... Spose'n you drap roun' ter-morrer en take dinner wid me. We ain't got no great doin's at our house, but I speck de ole 'oman en de chilluns kin sorter scramble roun' en git up sump'n fer ter ...
— Uncle Remus • Joel Chandler Harris
... summer houses, waiting for the spring-time when they could be wound up and rival their owners in animation; and the shining tiled roofs, mosaic courtyards, and polished house trimmings flashed up a silent homage to the sky, where never a speck of ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge
... feet long by 150) the only man Mrs. Chuff saw, was Tiggs. He was lying on a crimson-velvet sofa, reading a French novel of Paul de Kock. It was a very little book. He is a very little man. In that enormous hall he looked like a mere speck. As the ladies passed breathless and trembling in the vastness of the magnificent solitude, he threw a knowing, killing glance at the fair strangers, as much as to say, 'Ain't I a fine fellow?' They thought ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... under the force of the explosions. The next instant the first aeroplane to invade the Big Alkali scudded off across the level floor of the desert, and after some five hundred feet of land travel soared upward. In fifteen minutes it was a fast diminishing speck against the burnished blue of the ...
— The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings • Margaret Burnham
... the tree she felt herself borne up on strong wings ready to carry her to the clouds if she wished to go there, and seeming a mere speck in the sky, she was swept along till she beheld the Arch of St. Martin far below, with the rays of the sun shining on it. Then she swooped down, and, hiding herself behind a buttress so that she could not be detected from below, she ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... near unforested prairie in a temperate zone. He found a speck. He enlarged it manyfold. It was the mine on Orede. There were heaps of tailings. There was something which cast a ...
— This World Is Taboo • Murray Leinster |
