"Surface" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the longest and straightest bone in the earth's skeleton. The skeleton consists of six great bones, which may be said to form a spheroidal tetrahedron, or pyramid with a triangular base, for when a globe with a fairly rigid surface collapses because of shrinkage, it tends to assume this form. That is what has happened to the earth. Geologists tell us that during the thousand million years, more or less, since geological history began, the earth has grown cooler and hence ...
— The Red Man's Continent - A Chronicle of Aboriginal America, Volume 1 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Ellsworth Huntington
... be made to fit into this picture. When it appears, there is discord in the general harmony. All this motion must have motives behind it somewhere; but we can only conjecture the motives. We have only surface indications to guide us in our quest for these. But we are reasonably certain that these people are animated by the instinct of acquisition. They seem to want to get things, and so come where things are to ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... the common mind. As an architect explains the structure of a house from cellar to attic, so this accomplished geologist takes the globe to pieces, and explains the manner in which all its strata have been formed, from the granite foundation to the alluvial surface. It supplies just the information which many readers have been longing for, but unable ...
— The Life of Trust: Being a Narrative of the Lord's Dealings With George Mueller • George Mueller
... the jostling, snail-moving crowds; the illuminated canvas-sheets in front of the newspaper offices; the blare of tin horns, the cries, the yells, the hoots and hurrahs; the petty street fights; the stalled surface cars; the swearing cabbies; the newsboys hawking their latest extras, men carrying execrable posters of roosters. Hurrah! hurrah! A flash goes ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... who remembered a tradition, handed down from his forefathers, which said that part of the earth beneath us was hollow, and that some of the animals, even the great buffaloes, had dwelt in those underground regions before they came to dwell on the surface of the earth. He said that the coyote, the prairie wolf, was the last one to leave, and that he was sure that he still remembered the route to the very spot where Sistinakoo, the head chief of the regions, ...
— Algonquin Indian Tales • Egerton R. Young
... The same wise and benevolent maxims, which regulated the conduct of the first Incas, 9 descended to their successors, and under their mild sceptre a community gradually extended itself along the broad surface of the table-land, which asserted its superiority over the surrounding tribes. Such is the pleasing picture of the origin of the Peruvian monarchy, as portrayed by Garcilasso de la Vega, the descendant of the Incas, and through him made ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... replied Cousin Benedict, who was obstinate, "this would not be the first time that one has met a whale sleeping on the surface ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne
... their insults, we should have had no alternative but war,— the serious and conservative of the country would have had to suffer from the errors of its fools, as is often the case. But for this war there would be no possible excuse. Spain at one time owned nearly two- thirds of the earth's surface. She has lost every inch of it, except the Peninsula and a few islands, by her cruelty and stupidity. Her manifest destiny is to lose these islands in the same manner and for the same reasons. And brutal and stupid as she is, we have no more right ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... fidgeting and trying to take the pen away—and write an evangelical tract about the immorality of foreigners. Many of their contemporaries were the same. The sea of Tennyson's mind was troubled under its serene surface. The incessant excitement of Kingsley, though romantic and attractive in many ways, was a great deal more like Nervous Christianity than Muscular Christianity. It would be quite unfair to say of Ruskin ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... long cart, drawn by powerful stallions, appeared a gigantic firmament in the shape of a hemisphere, on whose upper surface the sun, moon, and stars were seen shining in radiant light. The moon passed through all her changes, the sun and planets moved, and from the dome echoed songs and lute-playing, which were intended to represent the music of the spheres. Another ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... inconspicuously in a deep chair in an angle, she felt that very few of the gaily chatting couples or of the waiting men and women about her were quite what they seemed on the surface. ...
— Constance Dunlap • Arthur B. Reeve
... calculated to give the Imperial advisers of the representative of the King in a colony. Nay, the Governor-in-Chief did not much relish the resolutions. He turned them over in his mind, again and again. There was something more than appeared upon the surface. He disrelished the idea of getting his meat poisoned by its passage through Canadian fingers. He was sure the King, his master, would pay him well, but, as for the Canadians, they might stop the supplies. ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... The foremost ships succeeded in reaching the mouth of the Great Harbour, and began to break through the barrier, when the whole Syracusan fleet closed in upon them on all sides, and forced them back Then the battle became general, and soon the two fleets were scattered over the whole surface of the bay in little groups, and each group engaged in a wild and furious melee. There was no attempt to manoeuvre, but ship encountered ship; as accident brought them together, and advanced to the attack, under a shower of javelins and arrows. Then followed the dull crash of collision, and the ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell
... is to centre the breath and to harmonize the activities of the whole man. The central organs should always be exercised before the organs of the surface. The laughter must be sincere, genuine, hearty ...
— How to Add Ten Years to your Life and to Double Its Satisfactions • S. S. Curry
... the voice—for it was now distinctly a voice—was beside me, on the water. I leaned over, leaned still farther. The lake was perfectly calm, and a moonbeam that passed through the air hole in the Rue Scribe showed me absolutely nothing on its surface, which was smooth and black as ink. I shook my ears to get rid of a possible humming; but I soon had to accept the fact that there was no humming in the ears so harmonious as the singing whisper that followed and now ...
— The Phantom of the Opera • Gaston Leroux
... fell backwards under the weight of their robes and trains, though in the case of Josephine the anxious moment may have been due to the carelessness, whether accidental or studied, of her "mantle-bearers." But to those who looked beneath the surface of things was not this an all-absorbing portent, that all this religious pomp should be removed by scarcely eleven years from the time when this same nave echoed to the shouts and gleamed with the torches of the worshippers of the ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... but the upper part of the step opens out gradually, and forms a conical cavity of a little larger diameter than the spindle, so that the latter has a considerable play sideways. The wharf carries in its lower part the sleeve, g, which runs upon a steel ring as above. The upper surface of the wharf is arched, and upon this is fitted the correspondingly arched friction plate, a, which latter is attached to the spindle by a screw. The position of the spindle is maintained by the collar, m. This collar is loose in the spindle rail, and only held ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 344, August 5, 1882 • Various
... ridge and got a fair view of the plain. Then a step farther, and we were in the dark again, behind boulders and picking our way over loose stones, or struggling with the wretched foothold afforded by a surface of light gravel, inclined to the horizontal at an angle of forty-five degrees. Then, with a scramble, a jump, and a little swearing in a great many languages—I think we counted that we spoke twenty-seven between us—we ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
... enough, Barry; thank God it is all over!" she said, at the end, "and we know," she went on, with one of her rare revelations of the spiritual deeps that lay so close to the surface of her life, "we know that she is safe and satisfied at last, in His care." For a moment her absent eyes seemed to fathom far spaces. Barry abruptly ...
— The Rich Mrs. Burgoyne • Kathleen Norris
... some vague and dim recollection of the general purport of the vision, yet, 30 with the exception of some eight or ten scattered lines and images, all the rest had passed away like the images on the surface of a stream into which a stone has been cast, but, alas! without the after restoration ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... to himself, when the voice of Scissors was heard, lamenting the fact that a young chestnut seemed to have a harder surface than his forehead boasted; "just keep on some more, and you'll be the worst banged-up bunch Stanhope ever knew," and he could not keep from chuckling again as in his imagination he saw the sorry picture of the three pursuers when they returned to hand in their report, with a list ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren
... and was almost suffocated by the powerful odour of crushed verdure. At last he halted in a sort of confused stupor, and surrendered to the pushing of some and the insults of others; and then he became a mere waif, a piece of wreckage tossed about on the surface of that ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... what we believed we had seen. No human being could by any possibility have existed in that subterranean world! No generation of men could inhabit the lower caverns of the globe without taking note of those who peopled the surface, without communication with them. It was folly, folly, ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... in the mere surface play of life that she could, for instance, be interested in that somewhat serious by-play called "flirtation," or take any delight in the exercise of those little arts of pleasing and winning which are none the less genuine and charming because they are not intellectual, Ruth, herself, had never ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 3. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... minutes one of the planes would roll over the surface of the level ground in front of the long line of hangars. Then, when sufficient momentum had been attained, it would commence to climb swiftly upward. Soon the machine would get into spirals like a winding staircase, and mount toward an altitude of ...
— Air Service Boys Over The Enemy's Lines - The German Spy's Secret • Charles Amory Beach
... ornament, traversed in all directions by avenues of trees, many of which bear tokens of a venerable age. These broad and well-kept pathways rise and decline over the elevations and along the bases of gentle hills which diversify the whole surface of the Park. The loftiest, and most abrupt of them (though but of very moderate height) is one of the earth's noted summits, and may hold up its head with Mont Blanc and Chimborazo, as being the site of Greenwich Observatory, where, if all nations will consent ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... work Spelling made among those slight reputations, floating in swollen tenuity on the surface of the stream, and mirroring each other in reciprocal reflections! Violent, abusive as he was, unjust to any against whom he happened to have a prejudice, his castigation of the small litterateurs of that day was ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... The kenshi (coroner) was soon on the scene. O'Mino with feeble voice told what she knew. "Deign to examine into the affair beyond the surface. My husband Densuke is not the man to commit this crime. Ask the neighbours, who know him. Last night he brought three ryo[u], given him by Takahashi Daihachiro[u] Sama, the Sakuji Machibugyo[u] of Geishu[u] Ko[u]. He said that it was for important service rendered. There is no doubt ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... look, on the contrary, aims at the heart of things without pausing on the surface, disdaining all that is external. It strives to penetrate the object to its very essence, as if to unite itself more closely within it; it has the expression of confidence, of faith—in a word, ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... think of returning, for these researches could not be prolonged indefinitely. The colonists were certainly right in believing that the mysterious being did not reside on the surface of the island, and the wildest fancies haunted their excited imaginations. Pencroft and Neb, particularly, were not contented with the mystery, but allowed their imaginations to wander into the domain ...
— The Secret of the Island • W.H.G. Kingston (translation from Jules Verne)
... corresponding in general character to known 17th-and 18th-century ice pits in England. This pit which lies 250 feet east of the Visitor Center may have served a spacious house which once stood nearby. It may be assumed that the missing surface structure was circular, probably of brick, had a small door, and was roofed over with thatch or sod ...
— New Discoveries at Jamestown - Site of the First Successful English Settlement in America • John L. Cotter
... look at that crowd of folks on the corner there!" he tells me. He points over to where half New York is bein' held up in a traffic jam—wagons, autos, surface cars and guys usin' rubber heels as a means of locomotion, all waitin' for the ...
— Alex the Great • H. C. Witwer
... sat upon a little box near the quarter, apparently contemplating the scene, for there was a fairy-like beauty in its dark windings, mellowed by the shadowing foliage that skirted its borders in mournful grandeur, while stars twinkled on the sombre surface. ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... the island of Ascension, which lies in lat 8 deg. N. and long. 14 deg. 20' W. about 200 leagues N.W. from St Helena. This is much of the same size, but the shore is excessively rocky, and the whole island absolutely barren, having neither trees nor grass, and the entire surface seems as it were rent asunder, whence some have conceived, and not without great show of reason, that it had been formerly a volcano, or burning mountain. In the middle of the island there is a high hill, on one side of which water has been found. At one season of the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... practised, 'when the sap is at the fullest in the summer, the buds you intend to inoculate being not too young but sufficiently grown.' For transplanting the middle of October is recommended, and the wise advice added, 'plant not too deep,' and in clay plant as near the surface as possible, for the roots will seek their way downward but rarely upward; and in transplanting 'you may prune the branches as well as the roots of apples and pears, but not of plums.' The best distance apart in an ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... many acquaintances and a number of friends, but he has but one "bunkie." In times of great danger two men who are "bunkies" will not shirk so easily as two independent men. The best in one man comes out to the surface and dominates any bad military points in the other. They can help each other in countless ways in war, and if one is unfortunately killed or wounded, the other will probably do his best to get even with the enemy at the earliest possible opportunity. This spirit may not be very Christianlike, ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... the age, of influences, of heredity, and so on. All the officials and their ladies were in ecstasies when they listened to him, and I could not make out for a long time what sort of man I had to deal with, a cynic or a clever rogue. Such types as he, on the surface intellectual with a smattering of education and a great deal of talk about their own nobility, are very clever in ...
— The Duel and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... for an instant attribute to its true cause her sudden change from radiant happiness to the weakness and lassitude that tell of mental anguish. They were not given to seeing anything that was not entirely on the surface and perfectly obvious. ...
— Tillie: A Mennonite Maid - A Story of the Pennsylvania Dutch • Helen Reimensnyder Martin
... declared her wish to keep it a secret, and she had not mentioned it to any one, whatever other people might have done.' Underneath this light and careless vein there were other feelings; but Mrs. Gibson was not one to probe beneath the surface. She had set her heart on Mr Henderson's marrying Cynthia very early in their acquaintance: and to know, firstly, that the same wish had entered into his head, and that Roger's attachment to Cynthia, with its ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... old-established custom, and should be maintained if possible. Secondly, the game is more skilful and more interesting on turf. Thirdly, grass is far easier on the eyes and feet of the players than any other surface. ...
— The Art of Lawn Tennis • William T. Tilden, 2D
... bizarre detail to which the newspapers drew particular attention, the surface of the roads was scarcely even scratched by the wheels of the apparition, which left behind it no such ruts as are usually made by heavy vehicles. At most there was a light touch, a mere brushing of the dust. It was only the ...
— The Master of the World • Jules Verne
... together they seized the terror-stricken creature and flung him overboard. Two or three bullets splashed about him as he came to the surface, just in time to be picked up by Bill, who had at last succeeded in ...
— The Cruise of the Dazzler • Jack London
... our countrymen "hohle winde," and by Virgil "parching winds," from the drouth which they bring upon the earth. These are mentioned also by Hosea 13, 15. The explanation, accordingly, is simple. Moses says that the wind was made to pass over the earth, that is, over the surface of the waters, for such a length of time that at last, the waters being dried up, the earth again appeared. So, in Exodus, a burning wind is said to have dried up the Red Sea. Now, God might have accomplished this without ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... from this material limitation together with the striving after a new form of composition must concern itself first of all with the destruction of this theory of one single surface—attempts must be made to bring the picture on to some ideal plane which shall be expressed in terms of the material plane of the canvas. [Footnote: Compare the article by Le Fauconnier in the catalogue of the second exhibition ...
— Concerning the Spiritual in Art • Wassily Kandinsky
... his body down into the opening. He saw the flame flickering over the surface of the sphere as the ...
— The Whispering Spheres • Russell Robert Winterbotham
... the river was covered over with barges, wherries and vessels of every description. Busy as it was fleets of swans were sailing upon its smooth surface, the noise of their gabble mingling agreeably with the song ...
— In Doublet and Hose - A Story for Girls • Lucy Foster Madison
... had tracked them; sometimes losing the trail altogether, sometimes guided merely by a fresh-made scratch on the surface of a stone, or by a broken twig or bruised blade of grass. At last, he traced it far out into the bush, many miles beyond the furthest range of settlements, and then he lost it altogether. There had been a halt, for ...
— A Final Reckoning - A Tale of Bush Life in Australia • G. A. Henty
... brown with a tinge of pale buff; fur blackish plumbeous beneath the surface, tipped with pale yellowish brown, and varied with longer, projecting, black-tipped hairs; below grayish white, the fur plumbeous beneath the surface and tipped with white, giving a whitish gray effect. Feet dusky; tail dusky ...
— Comments on the Taxonomy and Geographic Distribution of North American Microtines • E. Raymond Hall
... that has come down to us from the first dynasty. This lay in a chamber on the west side of the tomb. In the preparation of the stele, the block of stone had been ground all over and edges rounded. On its surface the hieroglyphs were then sketched in red ink, and were finally drawn in black, the ground being then roughly hammered out. There the work stopped, and the final scraping and dressing of the figures was never accomplished. The reading of the signs is ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... rest of them, I fear," he remarked, "a surface traveller; at least you will force me to believe so if you go on in this way. But come," he continued, "the storm threatens to last the morning; if you wish, I will help to make away with part of it, by recounting a little adventure which happened ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... his hand: a hand with a smooth surface and a tawny color, that fervently squeezed the fingers of a departing friend. "Is that man a scoundrel?" was Mr. Rayburn's first thought, after he had left the hotel. His moral sense set all hesitation at rest—and answered: "You're a ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... is set; the swallows are asleep; The bats are flitting fast in the gray air; The slow soft toads out of damp corners creep, And evening's breath, wandering here and there Over the quivering surface of the stream, Walkes not one ...
— Shelley • Sydney Waterlow
... the busy craft of the river, Myra exulted. She was coming back! This again was New York, real, right there, unbudged, her thousand lights like voices calling her home. The ferry landed; she hurried out and took a surface car And how good the crowd seemed, how warm the noise and the lights, what gladness was in the evening ebb-tide of people, how splendid the avenues shone with their sparkle and their shops and their traffic! She felt again the good hard pave under her feet. She met again a hundred ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim
... of trains and the metallic howls of surface cars that herded and volplaned about them, the fat lady, now apparently gone mad, was gesticulating insanely. Yet she was but indicating, or trying to indicate, the relative refuge of a side street in which there was ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... yellow rose, and as she once leaned towards the treble, where both hands were at work close together, it fell to the floor. Maurice started forward, and picking it up, laid it on the piano; beneath the gaslight, it sank a shadowy gold image in the mirror-like surface. As yet she had paid no heed to him, but, at this, she turned her head, and, still continuing to play, let her eyes rest ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... with everybody, but not in the way that sort of thing is too generally done—not by methods which have come to be called diplomatic and which involve a great deal of surface affability, of wordy beating about the bush and concealing one's real purposes from persons who see his hand and wonder if they ...
— Foch the Man - A Life of the Supreme Commander of the Allied Armies • Clara E. Laughlin
... the eastern point of the cove to that which terminated the Bay of Torwich, embracing what may be almost termed a champaign country, compared with the barren scenery I have described; and displaying the uneven surface of the richly wooded Park of Dovedale, with the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, No. 375, June 13, 1829 • Various
... cross-examination, which, in the hands of unskilled practitioners, generally tends to corroborate the evidence-in-chief, the case was overwhelmingly proved, and how sad and painful it was to contemplate none can realize who do not understand anything below the surface of ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... Farrant was saying. "I should like to know her better. Tonight I had the feeling somehow that she was purposely keeping on the surface of things, one came every now and then to a sort of wall, a kind of ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... The surface of Miracastle roiled with unfamiliar storms and tornados and hurricanes. Before these, the films of lichen evaporated into dust, and the sparse and stunted vegetation with ochre foliage turned sear and was powdered by the ...
— General Max Shorter • Kris Ottman Neville
... his life was given up to developing this great idea. He cut more letters from bark, and, covering the smooth surface with ink, pressed them upon parchment, thus getting a better impression, though still blurred and imperfect. He then cut letters from wood instead of bark, and managed to invent himself a better and thicker ink, which did not blur the page. Next, ...
— Eclectic School Readings: Stories from Life • Orison Swett Marden
... art of printing, and gunpowder; all which we can do under the full light of history. Stripped of these, society takes a ruder shape. But it is still not rude enough to be primitive. There are parts of the earth's surface, at the present moment, where the metals are unknown. There was, probably, a time when they were known nowhere. Hence, the influences of such a knowledge as this must be subtracted. And then come weaving and pottery, ...
— The Ethnology of the British Islands • Robert Gordon Latham
... the balustrade and looked down at the water. Glossy dark in the shadows of the old castle which stood in its midst, and in those of the grove on the further side, it glittered tranquilly where the moonshine fell on its surface, and the foliage around it wore a soft, glittering veil. Some mighty witch, some spirit combining Beauty, Power, and the Centuries, seemed to reign over the lake, holding silent court in the peaked and clustered white walls and turrets of the ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... he ceased for a while, but after the meal had been taken, he recommenced the task. He met with little success till he reached the door, but here he was more fortunate. A short distance below the surface were a number of pieces of stone of various sizes, which, he had no doubt, had been cut from the blocks to allow for the fixing of the lintel and doorpost. He chose half a dozen pieces of the handiest sizes, each having a flat surface. Then replacing the earth carefully, he took one ...
— The Lion of Saint Mark - A Story of Venice in the Fourteenth Century • G. A. Henty
... demanded the total abolition of the gilds. [Sidenote: 1503 ff.] A series of measures in England weakened the power of the gilds; under Edward VI [Sidenote: 1547] their endowments for religious purposes were {541} attacked, and this hurt them far more than would appear on the surface. The important Act Touching Weavers [Sidenote: 1555] both witnessed the unhappy condition of the misteries and, without seeming to do so, still further put them in the power of their masters. The workmen, it seems, ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... coast he found "ancient or fossil pottery, vessels, images," and other manufactured articles, all finely wrought. Some of these articles were made of gold. The most remarkable fact connected with them is that they were taken from "a stratum of ancient surface earth" which was covered with a marine deposit six feet thick. The geological formation where these remains were found is reported to be "as old as the drift strata of Europe," and "identical with that of Guayaquil in which bones of the mastodon are met with." The ancient surface ...
— Ancient America, in Notes on American Archaeology • John D. Baldwin
... contrast between the design and the background, you can dot or line over the slab upon which the design is lying, so as to make the surface rough in texture. When the clay is quite dry, which will take some week or more to effect, you can put any further work into the design with the steel tool, which must be used to scrape the clay; ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII: No. 356, October 23, 1886. • Various
... of my garden I have a high brick wall. To whom the bricks actually belong I cannot say, but at any rate I own the surface rights on this side of it. One of my ideas is to treat it as the back cloth of a stage, and paint a vista on it. A long avenue of immemorial elms, leading up to a gardener's lodge at the top of the wall—I mean at the end of the avenue—might create a pleasing ...
— If I May • A. A. Milne
... had to wait till he came up with me. We followed a deep and beautiful gulch for some distance, wading all the way through a shallow stream which flowed over a natural slanting pavement with a smooth surface, and I found it hard to keep my footing. We got a magnificent view from the top of a high hill of the country to the eastward, with large rivers winding among beautiful undulating wooded country as far as the eye could reach. We passed ...
— Wanderings Among South Sea Savages And in Borneo and the Philippines • H. Wilfrid Walker
... hand caressingly on the sun-warmed surface of the rock. How many things had happened since she had last leaned against its uncomfortable excrescences! She felt quite affectionately towards it, as one who has journeyed far may feel towards some old landmark of his youth which he finds unaltered on his ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... with an old veteran, upon whose ground they fought. He is a thorough Union man, and was a prisoner in the hands of the Secession party. The rebels, to spite the old veteran, dug a trench around his house, for burying their dead, only eighteen inches below the surface. They also ruined his well by throwing in decayed horse-flesh—in fact, ruined his old homestead, by cutting down his fruit-trees, and various other ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett
... afloat, and he began to swim awkwardly, forging farther from shore instead of nearer. In a moment he had tangled his legs among thick-growing, ropey stems of water-lilies, and frightened and confused at finding himself a prisoner, went down again under the green surface. ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... Forster had passed beyond the reach of censure; and Sir Eardley Wilmot maintained that the actual evils imputed had formed the topic of incessant communications. He derived his impressions from others; and seeing but the surface, was persuaded to the last that the probation system had ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... splendid thing of all was the great roaring fire in the wide chimney. The high shelf was adorned with two pitchers in curious glittering bronze, with odd designs in blue and white raised from the surface. The children brought their stools ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas
... the face some joker's fitted it up with. I'm rather shy about the caterpillar. Looks to me as if it was a bit of the real picture left showing through, though I don't very well see how a caterpillar would fit in with a portrait." The dealer passed the nail of his forefinger lightly over the surface of the picture. "It seems as if 'twas sunk. You can feel the edges of this heavy daubing rough ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... water, so that countless little jets of living fire seemed to flash and die away at the summit of every wavelet. A tall, spare man in a picturesque cloak, and with long, lank, white hair, leant over the taffrail, gazing at the numberless flashing lights of the surface. As he gazed, he talked on in his clear, rapt voice to a stranger by his side. The voice and the ring of enthusiasm were unmistakable. "Oh, no," he was saying, as we stole up behind him, "that hypothesis, I venture to assert, is no longer tenable by the light of recent researches. Death and ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... were now directed to commence deep ploughing on No. 14,—the forty acres set apart for the commercial orchard. This tract of land lay well for the purpose. Its surface was nearly smooth, with a descent to the west and southwest that gave natural drainage. I have been informed that an orchard would do better if the slope were to the northeast. That may be true, but mine has ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... on his knees and stooped over. Two huge letters, each perhaps a foot long, appeared cut in relief in the granite of the floor. Those two letters, clumsily, but plainly carved, with their corners rounded and their surface smoothed by the wear and tear of centuries, were a ...
— The Hollow Needle • Maurice Leblanc
... Spinners had entered upon their long sleep. The dead leaves rustled back and forth, shivering with the cold, when the winds came down upon the river from the hill. Caught, now and then, upon some whirling gust, the leaves were blown to the surface of the river itself, and, like scuttled craft, swept hastily to ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... the Cedars, and the Long Sault, it creates whirlpools and cataracts. But the rapids below Montreal are not of this magnificent character, being made perceptible only by the unusual swiftness of the water, and its surface being disturbed by foam, and waving lines and dimples. In short, I was disappointed in my expectation of seeing something very grand; and was half angry at these pretty behaved quiet rapids, to the foot of which we were towed in good style by our ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... progress in amendment, and had such frequent relapses, that I was almost ready to give up the attempt, and content myself with a faulty character in that respect, like the man who, in buying an ax of a smith, my neighbour, desired to have the whole of its surface as bright as the edge. The smith consented to grind it bright for him if he would turn the wheel; he turn'd, while the smith press'd the broad face of the ax hard and heavily on the stone, which made the turning of it very fatiguing. The man came every now and then from the wheel to see how the ...
— The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... civilized man intellectually and morally with the savage, we find that, along with his vast increase of cerebral surface, he has an immensely greater power of representing in imagination objects and relations not present to the senses. This is the fundamental intellectual difference between civilized men and savages.[15] ...
— The Destiny of Man - Viewed in the Light of His Origin • John Fiske
... be making good, and they gradually increased the size of his load until on the last trip he was carrying a 300-pound anvil under each arm. When he was half-way across the gangplank it broke and the Irishman fell in. With a great splashing and spluttering he came to the surface. ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... saw from the outside, and in the wall on each side are two square recesses in which the sacred vessels were locked up. The altar on its raised platform stands upon two rude upright stones, and is marked with five small crosses incised upon its upper surface. Behind it, on the rounded wall, are faint traces of carving and of fresco. All round the walls, except at the altar and the entrance, runs a low stone seat after the true type of the Christian Catacomb. A flat projecting rib of stone divides the barrel roof of the ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, ...
— The Communist Manifesto • Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
... member of my household. But there was no ruffian. The sweet girl had, during the day, been reading of St. Bartholomew's massacre, and was now lying on her back, dreaming it all over again. When dreams find anyone lying flat on the back, they cry out, "Here is a flat surface on which to skate and play ball," and from scalp to toe they sport themselves. The hardest nag in all the world to ride is the nightmare. Many think that sleep is lost time. But the style of your work ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... being! in his birth, which has been—in his life, which is—in his death, which shall be—mighty and essential solitude! that wast, and art, and art to be; thou broodest, like the Spirit of God moving upon the surface of the deeps, over every heart that sleeps in the nurseries of Christendom. Like the vast laboratory of the air, which, seeming to be nothing, or less than the shadow of a shade, hides within itself the principles of all things, solitude ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... only family; but like the ever-widening circle on the surface of a lake into which a stone has been flung, here, from this great centre, spread the wonderful ever-widening relationship—the real brotherhood of the world. It is at the Crib that everything has its beginning, not at the Cross; and it is only as little ...
— The Grey Brethren and Other Fragments in Prose and Verse • Michael Fairless
... then that my spirits and my serenity were quite restored. Not quite. How marvellously lie our anxieties, in filmy layers, one over the other! Take away that which has lain on the upper surface for so long—the care of cares—the only one, as it seemed to you, between your soul and the radiance of Heaven—and straight you find a new stratum there. As physical science tells us no fluid is without its skin, so does it seem with this fine medium of the soul, and these successive ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... deep below its surface crawl The reptile horrors of the Night— The dragons, lizards, serpents—all The hideous brood that hate the Light; Through poison fern and slimy weed, And under ragged, jagged stones They scuttle, or, in ghoulish greed, They lap ...
— John Smith, U.S.A. • Eugene Field
... relationship.[76] The eighteenth century, in the full enjoyment of that abandonment to sentiment initiated by Rousseau, proved peculiarly favorable to the expansion of the tendency to sentimental friendship. On this basis a really inverted tendency, when it existed, could easily come to the surface and find expression. We find this well illustrated in the poet Heinrich von Kleist who seems to have been of bisexual temperament, and his feelings for the girl he wished to marry were, indeed, much cooler than those for his ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... her conscience." Each time the words thrust themselves up through his absorbed realization of Mrs. Maitland's death, he pushed them down savagely: "It is impossible!" But each time they rose again to the surface of his mind. When they did, they brought with them, as if dredged out of the depths of his memory, some sly indorsement of their truth. . . . She never says anything about her husband. "Why on earth should she? He was probably ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... what impertinent things these little scamps are saying to you?' asked Amanda, pausing in a lecture on surface drainage which she was delivering to Lavinia, who was vainly struggling to cram a fat wine bottle, a cabbage leaf of strawberries, and some remarkable cakes ...
— Shawl-Straps - A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... failing I argue that Clemens's affection for me must have been great to enable him to condone in me the final defection which was apt to be the end of our enterprises. I have fancied that I presented to him a surface of such entire trustworthiness that he could not imagine the depths of unreliability beneath it; and that never realizing it, he always broke through with fresh surprise but unimpaired faith. He liked, beyond all things, to ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... and his house, struck by a thunderbolt in the midst of a dreadful storm. Swollen by the rain, the Alban lake rose in flood and drowned his palace. But still, says an ancient historian, when the water is low and the surface unruffled by a breeze, you may see the ruins of the palace at the bottom of the clear lake. Taken along with the similar story of Salmoneus, king of Elis, this legend points to a real custom observed by the early kings ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... this Summer, rural images were fast fading from my mind, and by the wise provision of the Regent all that was countryfy'd in the Parks is all but obliterated. The very colour of green is vanishd, the whole surface of Hyde Park is dry crumbling sand (Arabia Arenosa), not a vestige or hint of grass ever having grown there, booths and drinking places go all round it for a mile and half I am confident—I might say two miles in circuit—the stench of liquors, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... a thick fog was clinging to the surface of the river. A portion of the vapors that saturated the air were condensed by the cold, and lay as a dense cloud on the water. But the rays of the sun soon broke through the watery ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... But if not, then the less we have to do with such sham gladness the better. 'Even in laughter the heart is sorrowful, and the end of that mirth is heaviness.' The alternative presented for the choice of each of us is whether we will have surface joy and a centre of dark discontent, or surface sorrow and a centre of calm blessedness. The film of stagnant water on a pond full of rottenness simulates the glories of the rainbow, in which pure sunshine falls upon the pure drops, but it is only painted corruption ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... heaped on one another, like cannon balls in an arsenal, with green bushes and trees growing in the crevices. As for the sailors, although they appeared perfectly tranquil yet it was evident that they were on the alert, and that they carefully watched the glassy surface over which they were sailing, and on which a few fishing-boats, with their white sails, were alone visible. They were within fifteen miles of Monte Cristo when the sun began to set behind Corsica, whose mountains appeared against the ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... whereas they are frequently killed from fifteen to nineteen feet long. As long as it was in the water, it made strong resistance to being hauled on shore, carrying the canoe out into the deep channel, and occasionally raising its head above the surface, and clashing its jaws together menacingly. This action has a horrid sound, as the crocodile has no fleshy lips; and it brings its teeth and the bones of the mouth together with a loud crash, like the clank of two ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... hairy crop which has the peculiar quality of self-curing in the autumn sunshine and so furnishing a natural, uncut hay for the herds in the winter months. Water there was only where the mountain streams plowed their canyons through the deep subsoil, or at little lakes of surface drainage, or, at rare intervals, at points where pure springs broke forth from the hillsides. Along the river banks dark, crumbling seams exposed coal resources which solved all questions of fuel, and fringes of cottonwood ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... those animals which the nobility of their nature brings near to man, such as the lion, the horse, and the dog. At the bottom was the sea, in the depths of which were to be seen swimming the most fantastic fishes, and on the surface a superb three-decked vessel. On the two sides, trees full of birds put the heavens, which they touched with their topmost branches, in communication with the earth, which they grasped with their roots; and in the space left in the middle of all this, in the most perfectly horizontal ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... ascending from the eastern, the Atlantic States, bounded by the broad ocean, of nearly three thousand miles, which, when looking to the east, as John did at sun rising, would give the appearance of the sun's rising out of the water but a few miles off. Owing to the round surface of our globe, every 15 deg., or nine hundred miles that we sail from hence to the east, the sun appears ascending from his ocean bed one hour earlier in the morning. This is familiar to the mariner; as also when they discover another ship, they cry, "sail ho!" ...
— A Vindication of the Seventh-Day Sabbath • Joseph Bates
... falling in many folds, and having small knots of fringe, gracefully flowing in its extremities. Glittering stars were dispersed through the embroidered border of the robe, and through the whole of its surface, and the full moon, shining in the middle of the stars, breathed forth flaming fires. A crown, wholly consisting of flowers and fruits of every kind, adhered with indivisible connection to the border of conspicuous robe, in all its ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... in the bosom of a fruitful valley, extending eight leagues in length, and three in breadth. Through this valley flowed the waters of the Guadalentin and the Guadalquiton, whose streams were conducted by a thousand canals over the surface of the vega. In the midst of the plain, adjoining the suburbs, might be descried the orchard or garden, as it was termed, of Baza, a league in length, covered with a thick growth of wood, and with numerous villas and pleasure-houses of the wealthy citizens, now converted into garrisoned ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... to bluish-green. They had not passed this point with Banks, but Morganstein shaped a course to a black pinnacle, lifting through the mist beyond, that he believed was the crag at the shoulder. She stumbled repeatedly on the rough surface. Her labored breathing in the great stillness, like the beat of a pendulum in an empty house, tried his strained nerves. He upbraided her for leaving her alpenstock down the slope. But she paid no attention. She looked back constantly; she was like a woman being led away from a locked door, moving ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... into tombstones, doorsteps, fronts of edifices, fireplaces, etc. That will be a pity. On such portions of the walls as are within reach, visitors have sculptured their initials, or names at full length; and the white letters showing plainly on the gray surface, they have more obvious effect than such inscriptions generally have. There was formerly, I believe, a complete arch of marble, forming a natural bridge over the top of the cave; but this is no longer so. At the bottom of ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... of the eminent thinker who introduced them had made their way into no writings or discussions but those of his very few direct disciples, have emerged from the depths and manifested themselves on the surface of the philosophy of the age. It is not very widely known what they represent, but it is understood that they represent something. They are symbols of a recognised mode of thought, and one of sufficient ...
— Auguste Comte and Positivism • John-Stuart Mill
... encountered him in the midst of forests by this time hard to traverse. There they showed themselves as enemies instead of subjects and wrought many deeds of fearful injury. [-20-] The mountains had an uneven surface broken by ravines, and the trees, standing close together, were extremely tall. Hence the Romans even before the enemy assaulted them were having hard work in felling, road making, and bridging places that required ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio
... Thacker, "and I'll tell you. Twelve years ago they lost a kid. No, he didn't die—although most of 'em here do from drinking the surface water. He was a wild little devil, even if he wasn't but eight years old. Everybody knows about it. Some Americans who were through here prospecting for gold had letters to Senor Urique, and the boy was a favorite with them. They filled his head with big stories about the States; and about a month ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... not too amiably. Whether or not it was startled by the sudden flap of the sail as the boat jibed, it is of course impossible to say, but, be that as it may, as the boat suddenly swerved away from above it the huge creature rose with a rush to the surface and sprang right out of the water to a height of some twelve feet, and, flapping its enormous wings like a great bird, flew right over the boat, coming down on the other side of her, at a distance of some four or five fathoms, with a boom like the sound ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood
... the bridge at Stanley Street, now deserted, and by common consent they paused in the middle of it, leaning on the rail. The hideous chocolate factory on the point was concealed by the night,—only the lights were there, trembling on the surface of the river. Against the flushed sky above the city were silhouetted the high chimneys of the power plant. Ditmar's shoulder touched hers. He was still pleading, but she seemed rather to be listening to the symphony of the unseen waters falling ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... who looks into their productions, that they who sport such sentiments can never be great poets. How could any man of high original genius ever stoop publicly, at the present day, to dip his fingers in the least of those glittering and rancid obscenities which float on the surface of Mr. Hunt's Hippocrene? His poetry is that of a man who has kept company with kept-mistresses. He talks indelicately like a tea-sipping milliner girl. Some excuse for him there might have been, had he been hurried away by imagination or passion. But ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... this narrative is its peculiar truth. It not only tells what happened to us—the five people concerned in it—but what has happened and is happening to all the other fishing parties that at the season of the year, from Halifax to Idaho, go gliding out on the unruffled surface of our Canadian and American lakes in the still cool of ...
— Frenzied Fiction • Stephen Leacock
... earth, rain was falling from gray and gloomy clouds. Above those clouds the sun shone down from a blue sky upon a billowing mass that bore a resemblance to the uneven surface of a limitless plain of lather. High, but not too high above cloud-level, a big white Albatross circled serenely, its long, ...
— Tam O' The Scoots • Edgar Wallace
... all egress is denied to it, how it accumulates, how it swells, how it overflows, how it hollows out the heart; how it breaks in inward sobs, and dull convulsions, until it has rent its dikes and burst its bed. The austere and glacial envelope of Claude Frollo, that cold surface of steep and inaccessible virtue, had always deceived Jehan. The merry scholar had never dreamed that there was boiling lava, furious and profound, beneath the snowy ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... of the world had permitted the dissolvent philosophy of the century to enter the very pith and fiber of their mental quality. For the rich and the well-born it was rather an imported fashion, an attractive drapery laid over the surface of minds that were conventional down to the ground, the modish mental recreation of men who lived by custom and guided their steps in the well-worn paths of precedent. In America, as in England, as in France, ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... something important underlying the surface of this inquisition and he paused a moment to reflect before continuing. "It was Langhorn who left first. Mr. Graham stood still a while, lookin' in this direction as if he still meant to come over, then he turned and headed ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... a row, I would throw the skins over them again, inside out. The weight of the next row will keep the skins in their places, and it will be impossible for anyone to obtain a footing on that slippery surface, especially if we ...
— Saint Bartholomew's Eve - A Tale of the Huguenot WarS • G. A. Henty
... unbuckling the straps of his breast- and back-pieces, he threw them off, cast his helmet on the deck, blistering his hands as he did so, and leapt overboard. It was with a delicious sense of coolness that he rose to the surface and looked round. Hitherto he had been so scorched by the flame and smothered by the smoke that it was with difficulty he had kept his attention upon what he was doing, and would doubtless, in another ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty
... pressure of one hundred tons to the acre; and here were about five feet of water forming, behind the railway embankment, over the shallower workings of Twenty-Two. You must understand that, in a coal-mine, the coal nearest the surface is worked first from the central shaft. That is to say, the miners may clear out the stuff to within ten, twenty, or thirty feet of the surface, and, when all is worked out, leave only a skin of earth upheld by some few pillars of coal. In a deep mine where they know that they have ...
— Soldiers Three • Rudyard Kipling
... who in turn followed Tom who walked some ten feet ahead. A light breeze sprang up and blew across the surface of the powdery sand. Ten minutes later, when they stopped to adjust their shoulder packs, they looked back. The breeze had obliterated their tracks and the mountain of sand covering the spaceship appeared to be no different from any of the other small dunes on the ...
— Stand by for Mars! • Carey Rockwell
... few agents and propagandists described in the foregoing chapters do not, as I said in the preface, even scratch the surface of what seem to be widespread efforts to interfere in the internal affairs of the American people and their Government; but a few basic conclusions can reasonably be drawn from what little is known of ...
— Secret Armies - The New Technique of Nazi Warfare • John L. Spivak
... Attica had its peculiar shortcomings and virtues. It was for the most part stony and unfertile. Only a shallow layer of good soil covered a part of its hard foundation rock, which often in turn lay bare on the surface. The Athenian farmer had a sturdy struggle to win a scanty crop, and about the only products he could ever raise in abundance for export were olives (which seemed to thrive on scanty soil and scanty rainfall) and honey, the work of the ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... question of the relation of population to area in rural Ireland, or, in other words, when we inquire how many people the agricultural land will support under existing circumstances, or under any attainable improvement of the conditions in our rural life. Roughly speaking, the surface area of the island is 20,000,000 acres, of which 5,000,000 are described in the official returns as 'barren mountain, bog and waste.' This leaves us with some 15,000,000 acres available for agriculture and grazing, which area is now divided ...
— Ireland In The New Century • Horace Plunkett
... will. That would not have suited his plans. So he saw his one-time friend as often as he must, and then was civil invariably, civil with the respect which was Dr. Harrison's highest degree of civility and which probably in this instance was true and heartfelt; but he was cool, after his slight gay surface manner, and even when speaking kept at a distance. For the rest, it is notable, even in so small a space as the walls of a steamer shut in, how far apart people can be that have no wish to be near. Days passed ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... serenade— Or yellow-haired Pollonia murmuring To Henry, some unutterable thing. I see a chaos of green leaves and fruit Built round dark caverns, even to the root 275 Of the living stems that feed them—in whose bowers There sleep in their dark dew the folded flowers; Beyond, the surface of the unsickled corn Trembles not in the slumbering air, and borne In circles quaint, and ever-changing dance, 280 Like winged stars the fire-flies flash and glance, Pale in the open moonshine, but each one Under the dark trees seems a little ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... degradation of his own thought, may not a courtier be involved! Ah, De Thou, my dear De Thou! I am not made for the court; I feel it, though I have seen it but for a moment. There is in my temperament a certain savageness, which education has polished only on the surface. At a distance, I thought myself adapted to live in this all-powerful world; I even desired it, led by a cherished hope of my heart. But I shuddered at the first step; I shuddered at the mere sight of the Cardinal. The recollection ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet |
